


Drowning Lessons

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Graphic Violence, M/M, TYTNW, The Year That Never Was, Torture, if you know what i mean, repeatedly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:49:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Valiant was where Captain Jack Harkness learned to drown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

**Day 1**

Damn perception filter.

 

**Day 2**

Jack had been chained somewhere in the bowels of the Valiant right after Martha dematerialized, and he hadn't seen or heard anything about the Doctor since. But he was sure that the Time Lord was alive and plotting.

Jack's cell was small and humid, rust spilling off of the metal walls onto the concrete of the floor. He didn't know how long he had been there, but he guessed that it was nearing a full twenty-four hours. No one had come to tell him what was going on, or to unchain him so that he could lie down. That was a bad sign. His captor either knew that he didn’t physically need sleep, or he didn’t care.

But he wasn't going to dwell. He'd developed an ability to combat the rising weight of the years by focusing on the present. The Doctor was going to act soon. And when he did, Jack was going to do what he needed to do.

 

**Day 3**

A guard came that night and held a bottle of lukewarm water to his lips without speaking or showing any facial expression. There was no food.

 

**Day 5**

Jack was becoming hot and pissed. He had no idea how long he had been left upright, but he knew it was longer than he liked. The humidity was weighing him down, clinging to his hair and his skin and the exhaustion in his legs. He wished he could shrug off his outer shirt.

He wished someone would come tell him what the hell was going on.

He was not happy when his wish came true.

 

**Day 7**

Jack officially felt like shit. He had a splitting headache, and pain shot through his legs every time he shifted position. The beginnings of starvation weren't helping either.

But above and beyond that, he was filthy. His clothes were coated in grime, and everything stuck together from days of sweat and humidity. Jack was starting to not actually want anyone to see him. He was even embarrassed in front of the guard who did not look him in the eye. He'd known his time on the ship was not going to go well; he'd been prepared to fight to the death a few times, but he'd hoped he could do it with more flair.

As it was, Jack was almost more embarrassed than nervous when the Last Prime Minister of Great Britain flounced into his cell.

"Hello, Jacky boy!" The Time Lord sing-songed. "I am _so_ sorry to have kept you waiting that long! But you know how it is - nations to conquer, cities to burn..."

"Sure," Jack replied equally brightly. "But couldn't you have managed some nicer accommodations? Maybe some tea?"

A bored expression replaced the smile in a moment. “Don’t flatter yourself. You, Captain, are an afterthought and an accident.”

Jack wondered if Harold Saxon knew how true those words really were. "Where's the Doctor?" he challenged uncomfortably.

"Oh Doctor this, Doctor that, it's all about _him,_ isn't it?" he sighed. "He's not that special. He's not the last of Time Lords any more. He's not even the only mass murderer on this ship."

"I don’t care.”

"Ah. He hasn't told you, then. He became the last of his kind because he murdered the rest. He annihilated his own species."

"You are a liar. You are the murderer and the monster."

"I see. You should know, Jack, that there are many possibilities for our time here. However, each word you say narrows them."

Jack incongruously thought of Tosh, then, and how he didn't know where she was or if she was unhurt. In that moment, all that he could think was that it was this man in front of him who was responsible for their situation. "Stop playing so damn _reasonable_ ," he spat childishly. "You're nothing but a monster, and there's nothing that you could say that I would believe."

"Ah. Pity."

There was a searing pain in his gut as Saxon stabbed him. He gave the long knife a vicious twist before extricating it and walking out.

Jack had eight minutes to think about what he had done.

\----

Jack gasped needles of air into his lungs and reflexively grasped the nearest thing to him to anchor himself. That thing was unexpectedly soft.

"Oh. Sorry." His face burned as he withdrew quickly from the flushed woman beside him. Martha's sister... what was her name? Tish. Tish Jones. A beat later he recovered his face. From his position lying on the floor on his back, he offered her his hand. "I don't believe we've been introduced. Captain Jack Harkness."

She stared at him incredulously and didn't say anything.

"What? Is there something on my face?" Then he remembered that there had in fact been something on his face, all over his body, and he quickly checked himself for blood. The substance stained the hem of his shirt and one of his sleeves, but he himself was entirely clean. He stared at Tish. "Did you wash the blood off?"

"I- I thought you were dead." Ah. She speaks.

"Yeah. That happens. Did you clean the blood off?"

"Yes."

"Well then, thank you. Hate when that stuff dries. It gets all crusty and sticky."

"Were you?" She asked timidly.

"Was I what?" Jack asked distractedly. He was already moving on to other things, logistics, probing for opportunities to escape.

"Dead."

"Oh. Yeah."

"Ah."

Jack decided that, when he escaped, he was taking Tish with him.

"Well," she stood up and brushed off her hands reflexively. "I'm sorry, but I have to leave. The guards are coming soon to put you back up again."

"I understand. Don't worry about it, Tish." She reacted slightly when he used her name. He resolved to do so more often.

She turned around a step away from the door. "The Doctor is safe," she said. "He hasn't done anything, but the Master hasn't hurt him. Martha said to trust him."

"She's right." Jack smiled gratefully. "Thanks for keeping me updated."

Tish smiled and left.

The guards came a moment later, five of them, with guns. They got Jack up again, but not without a broken nose or two between them.

By the time he was alone, Jack had added Tish to the list of people that Harold Saxon had wronged. People he was going to avenge, one way or another. He almost hoped the bastard would pay him another visit tomorrow.

If the Time Lord wanted to talk, so be it.

 

**Day 8**

This time when Saxon waltzed in, guards in tow, Jack was the first to speak. "Well, hello! How are we doing today?"

"Marvelous! And you?"

"Eh, been better, been w-"

Before he had a chance to finish the word the tension on his arms was loosened and he plummeted towards the ground. Before he hit, two of the guards caught him and carefully fastened two thick metal cuffs around his biceps, wary not to let him go for a moment. Those they fastened together behind his back, then hoisted towards the ceiling, so by the time he got his wits about him he was on tip-toe with his shoulders twisted and strained upwards.

Jack recognized the classic stress position. It would be fine. He didn't need those shoulders anyway. He just kind of hoped the Master would get his kicks and kill him soon so he could return to the marginally more comfortable position of standing upright.

Saxon stayed silent, strolling around Jack's suspended body, as Jack gasped for breath. Jack tried not to think about the way the new, extreme positioning of his arms exposed his chest. He tried to remember what it was he'd intended to say to let him take control of the situation.

"What was that you were going to say, Jack?" Saxon whispered.

"What do you _want_?"

"Just retributions. For years and a nation lost."

"What do you want from _me_?"

The Master laughed. "Absolutely nothing! Don't kid yourself. You're not important whatsoever. You're just an oddity, who happened to be at the wrong place at the right time. Or are you?"

Jack glared.

"No, you are more than that." The Master's eyes lit up. "Of the thousands who have met your Doctor, none of them are quite like you. None of them have every been quite so _stupid_."

With that the Master spun on his heel and left Jack hanging there.

Jack got food that night, but they didn't let him down. One of the guards had to spoon feed him the bitter vegetable mash. It was somewhat humiliating to be that helpless and to have to be taken care of by the enemy, but he was still somewhat glad that it wasn't Tish or her mother who came. He didn't want them to have to see him like this. He didn't want to be seen like this.

 

**Day 9**

Jack was exhausted. He didn't need sleep, but some positions were still more restful than others. And this was not one of them.

His body was tilted slightly forward, so he had to hold rigid in order to maintain the position. If he tried to relax he tilted more forward and the pain in his shoulders became nearly unbearable. His head hung down limply and his eyes were closed as he tried in vain to distract himself.

He didn't realize that he wasn't alone until he felt a hand placed, of all places, gently on his head.

He jerked up violently and reeled back, gasping at the sudden change of position but still spooked and anxious to get away.

Harold Saxon was standing right in front of him with a satisfied grin on his face and the blood of several thousands on his hands and as Jack fell back into his original position he used the momentum to spit right in the Time Lord’s face.

Saxon reached up and wiped the saliva off. “Well, good morning, Captain,” he whispered. “What does it feel like?”

“What does what feel like?” Jack challenged uncomfortably.

The Time Lord was suddenly an inch away from him. “How does it feel to lose this life, all these _sensations,_ then suddenly be reimmersed in them? Can you control it?”

“What the hell? No…” He grudgingly answered the final question.

“Really? Are you absolutely sure? Perhaps you can, somewhere, deep down, if you truly will it. Maybe you can keep yourself from coming back. Which begs the question, why don’t you? What’s here for you?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Love. Right? Or loyalty. Or something else too high-minded for me to understand because I’m a villain and you and your Doctor are _heroes_. I’ll tell you a secret, Jack. Hollywood lied to you. You aren’t special and you aren’t strong. You’re not even a hero. You’ve killed far, far too many for that.”

“This is an odd conversation. Been watching too much Disney recently?”

The Time Lord struck him full across the face, snapping his head to the side and splitting his lip. Jack spat blood out and grinned broadly.

Saxon glared. “You think you have power here. You don’t.” With that he slit Jack’s throat.

\----

When Jack woke up, he found his body relaxed. He stared up at the ceiling as Tish wiped the last of the blood from his chest.

He sat up and grinned at her. "And how are you doing today, beautiful?"

She looked at him incredulously. "I've... been better. How about you?"

"All the better for seeing you."

To his surprise, Tish started to cry. He put an arm around her and hugged her, using his other hand to turn her chin gently towards him. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? The world's ending! Everyone I knew is dead."

"We're alive."

"For how long?"

"How long does anyone have?"

"Longer than a day, which seems to be your lifespan!"

"But I always come back," he whispered.

"For how long?" she challenged again.

"Always. Forever. I swear to you, Tish, I will always come back."

"I wish you didn't." She sobbed against his chest until the guards came and regretfully tore them apart.

 

**Day 11**

The three guards fanned out, one, Jack was pleased to see, sporting a black eye and a wary glare. He grinned ferally as the center one neared, ready to distribute the bruises more evenly this time.

He flexed his arms experimentally to find that he was held fast, so he moved on to other avenues of attack. He would head butt this man if necessary.

The man stepped forward, tantalizingly out of reach. Jack noted with frustration that they were exactly eye to eye.

“Captain,” the man stated.

“Gentlemen,” Jack acknowledged.

“You hurt my men. Captain,” the man repeated. His voice was unexpectedly soft and it caught Jack by surprise. His lips were just beginning to part to form a question that he had not yet decided on when a searing and familiar impact came from behind and the bullet burrowed through to his heart. He died gasping into the eyes of the man who he realized, belatedly, was a captain himself.

\----

Jack came back with an enormous lungful of air to find a stopwatch in front of his face. “Three minutes,” he heard from behind, and he could not stop an insane grin from flooding across his face. The first few seconds were always tetchy.

“Okay,” he heard from behind him. A deep breath and another bullet and he died with a grin across his face.

\----

The next time he came back he managed to spit in the guard’s face before he could step away. It was a different man than had stood in front of him before, younger. Barely an adult. This one didn’t meet his eyes, keeping his head down and allowing only a sideways glance to where Jack assumed the captain stood. “He’s awake,” the boy mumbled. “Two minutes.”

“Fuck.” The captain surprised Jack by stepping into his field of vision. “Why don’t you have the decency to at least stay dead a little longer?”

“Why don’t you have the decency to stop killing me?”

“Twice more, Captain. He’s watching.” With those cryptic words the man drew his gun and shot Jack himself.

As the light bled from his vision the last thing he saw was a whisper on the man’s lips, a determined apology.

\----                        

When Jack woke again, steeling himself for what he trusted was his final death of the day, he watched that other captain. The man was torturing Jack without insanity or a superiority complex to hide behind. The man seemed to hate himself for it.

Jack nodded. The final shot hit him straight in the chest.

\----

When next he woke, he was alone in the room with Harold Saxon. They regarded each other silently for a moment.

Jack guessed the ever-performing Saxon would respond best to a role, so he affected scientific disinterest. “So, what’s the average?”

“What average?” Caught by surprise for a moment.

“Time it takes me to wake back up from being shot in the chest. I did notice the men with stopwatches and guns standing around me earlier, you know.”

“Ah, yes. Three minutes and twenty-three seconds.” Jack noted briefly that this number rolled off of his captor’s tongue memorized.

“Hm. Feels like longer.”

 

**Day 15**

Tish's mother, Francine, came to feed him that night. Jack smiled broadly at her, but she just glared back. "What's wrong with you?" she demanded.

"The immortality or the inhuman attractiveness?"

"The getting my girls into trouble."

"Is Tish okay?" Jack was suddenly worried.

Francine softened slightly at the transparent worry in his face. "She's fine. I'm more curious how Martha got mixed up in all of this."

"I honestly don't know. But she's a brave girl. If anyone can help us here, it's her."

"Damn right she is." Finished, Francine turned smartly on her heel and left Jack smiling as he understood where a bit of Martha's fire came from.

 

 **Day** **16**

No one came to feed him for the first time. He was surprised to find himself worrying over the Jones women. There was nothing he could do.

 

**Day 18**

Jack’s heart leaped when he heard the footsteps outside of his cell. Two guards stepped in and economically gagged and hooded him. He tried to struggle, but he was moving sluggishly and his movements were restricted.

He heard the heavy footsteps retreat and lighter ones enter.

"Hello Jack," said the Master softly. "Now it's time for me to talk."

His voice revolved around Jack in a slow circle, and he began to think that the man wasn't capable of speaking without pacing.

"You puny humans are no threat to me."

Jack made a point of glaring, even though no one could see his expression through the hood.

"Did you know that the Doctor hasn't asked about you once? He has spoken every chance he gets, vainly trying to cajole me into leaving the planet, into letting my prisoners go, into _joining him_ , as if I'd _want_ to go watch his heart bleed all over the galaxy - but he has not once mentioned you. Why do you think that is?"

Jack had the feeling that he should be paying attention, that his captor was attempting to impart valuable life lessons here, but he couldn’t be anything other than relieved. At least the man was going to kill him soon. Death would reset his hunger, at least for a few days. Death by starvation was a bad one, and he didn’t want to be anywhere near that weak this far in enemy territory.

"I want you to know that because I want you to know that no one is coming to help you. All those people who follow you blindly, who _adore_ you, they don't care enough to return the favor. You're just smoke and mirrors, Jack. And I can see straight through you. It's time for them to, as well."

The Master finally stood still.

"I'm going to find them, Jack. I'm going to find your little team, and they are going to see what a coward you really are."

The Master left Jack hanging there.

 

**Day 20**

Francine came to visit that night. Jack was relieved to see her, but she had only water and stern words.

"This Doctor of yours is alive. You're alive. Now, Martha thought very highly of the pair of you. She trusted you, and now she needs you. We all do. So what the hell are you doing to escape and fix this? Talk to me!" Jack was responding sluggishly. "You're immortal. The stakes are higher for us than for you. Does that mean you're going to abandon us now?"

 _The stakes are low for me._ Jack nearly laughed. "I'm trying," he croaked out.

"This doesn't look like trying."

"No, this looks like starving."

Francine's face grew even harder. "You won't get pity from me. I thought you couldn't die."

"Oh," Jack really did laugh this time. "I can die. I just can't seem to stay dead."

Hmm." Francine spun on her heel and was gone.

 

**Day 21**

Jack had a pounding headache and somewhere far off the groans of the Valiant’s engines were fading in and out of an orchestra. He hummed along and found comfort in the sound.

He was no longer hungry, but he was weak. That hurt worse: knowing that he was so utterly limp and helplessness and at the mercy of his enemy in this treacherous territory where the fate of the only people who were tying him to this life relied on him doing the impossible.

Whiteness was better. So Jack thought white and hummed to the music and knew that this, too, would end.

There was a small gasp. "Captain!" It was so soft and effeminate that Jack fully expected to see Tish when he opened his eyes. But it was Francine standing before him, her eyes soft and wide but rapidly narrowing.

"I didn't expect--I'm sorry." She rapidly regained her composure and Jack automatically followed suit, even though it was practically a moot point now, straightening his back and schooling his features for the first time in days.

"You should call ahead next time. It's rude to drop in on people unexpected."

"Well, I brought you something. To make up for it." He realized for the first time that she was hiding something under one of those absurd little aprons that the Master must be forcing her and Tish to wear.

His stomach cramped heavily in response but his eyes flicked up, to the camera implanted in the corner that he couldn't imagine having forgotten for even a moment.

"No."

"He's gone. He won't see."

"I don't care. I'm not putting you in any more danger. It's my job to fix this, remember?" He affected a laugh, then cut it off short in embarrassment.

"It's my choice. Please, Captain." Jack stared her down. "You're no good to any of us incapacitated."

He held her gaze for a long moment. Thing is, she was right. And he was hungry. "Thank you, Francine."

"Yeah." She took out a half-portion of something that looked tantalizingly like mashed potatoes, held in a bright green cup with candy canes in a ring around the rim. An unintentional grin spread across Jack's face as he looked at the cup, and he looked up to see a similar smile on Francine's face. She lost it quickly. "I know it's disgusting," she warned, "but this is what we've got."

"Francine," Jack warned. "If this is how much you're getting I don't want you wasting any of it on me."

"As long as you don't give up, it's not wasted, Captain."

There was no pity in her voice. But there was a tinge of grudging respect. He decided that he liked Francine.

He opened his mouth and allowed himself to be fed a bitter vegetable mash that proved to be as disgusting as described. It was glorious.

 

**Day 22**

Jack fervently hoped that one of the Jones women would come to him that day, as much for human interaction as for food. The few minutes of gruff mothering at the hands of Francine on each of the last two days was wonderful, but it was far from enough. Jack's mouth felt strange. He wasn't smiling enough.

It wasn't that this was bad. It was, but he had had worse days and less reason to endure. It's just that there had usually been _someone_. He had died, been killed repeatedly, for a lot of insane reasons, but at least there was someone watching who cared. Who wanted information, retribution, something other than data on his resurrections to satisfy objective personal curiosity.

That made Jack wonder about something else that Harold Saxon had said. That Jack must want to come back, somehow, in order for it to keep happening. That theory held no water at all, as exemplified by dozens of instances. Starting with a particularly torturous three days in the Italian district of 1920's New York. He'd found himself unable to perform through that. He had to leave, right away, so that Angelo could not see-- Jack without a facade was frightening and, likely, empty. What would be worse--to see them cower in fear or turn away in disinterest?

Unless the fates were pulling him towards something, towards a fixed point where he could matter. He had to care because he had to stay. But what would happen when that time passed? Stories. He was a man of ration, he had to be, and he didn't believe in any myth that didn't center around a wise old wizard rescuing the demons.

Jack realized with a muted start that he had not slept since his time on the ship. He had no idea how long it had been--the lights in his cell had been kept at the same middling level for the entirety of his time there, but he was afraid it had been months. Or hours. He was going to have to ask Francine. How could he not know? He was a time traveler; he knew time, knew it without watches or satellites because those weren't accurate across centuries. What else was he losing here?

Sleep. He needed sleep. Not physically, obviously, but psychologically, he needed the rest from the constant thought. As soon as he could sleep he would be fine. He just had to sleep.

He couldn't sleep. He was in pain. One of his legs was spasming and he had to shift nearly all of the weight onto the other, which was trembling. The only real rest he had had was when he was dead. At least that rest didn't require the relaxation like sleep did. It was easier.

Jack realized that he was fantasizing about dying.

What had happened here? He had been killed, shot, several times--yes. Knifed a few times. But he was Captain Jack Harkness. He had lived through a World War--two, in fact. He was used to getting shot. In fact, he vividly remembered being recently shot by one of the very people he couldn't stop thinking about. A few deaths and he was already losing it.

Harkness noted belatedly that he was crying.

 

**Day 24**

"Hello, freak."

Jack hadn't noticed the Time Lord come in. He barely noticed him standing there.

"Where's that deliciously heroic defiance?"

Jack's head swam as Saxon slapped him, but he couldn't feel the sting.

"I'm waiting, Captain."

He managed a half-assed "fuck you," then closed his eyes.

Either that slap had been harder than the thought, or Saxon had resumed the incessant pacing, because now his voice revolved in ever shortening circles.

"Do you know how long you've been here? Twenty-four days. That's all. How many times has everything you've known, everything you've loved, collapsed around you into a smoking ruin with only you standing tall? How many centuries? But now, after less than a month with me--what are you now, Captain?"

There wasn't quite enough cotton in his head to smother the poisonous words. But for a moment Jack forgot about Torchwood, forgot about the time agency, and felt the blissful sand between his toes and the blazing sky above. A smaller hand below, reaching for his, his responsibility now to help and to hold.

_I let go._

He picked up from that smoking ruin and become a captain, leading a whole team who trusted him with their life, standing tall and proud and haughty on top of a skyscraper at night, surveying the city that he decided was his now.

Maybe that was the error. How could be special now if he was useless before?

He didn’t look back. That’s all.

"What are you now?"

He didn’t check to be sure the Doctor was behind him.

"Where are you now?" The words floated back to him. He opened his eyes to realize that the Time Lord was long gone.

He closed his eyes again.

Jack somehow felt Tish as she neared him, a tremulous reassurance wafting down the long hallway he imagined outside of his cell, warming him long before he could here her footsteps. Saxon walked in silence, but Tish could never disappear.

"Hey," he whispered.

"Hey," she whispered back, with something resembling a wince but feeling like a smile. "I don't have any food today. I'm so sorry, we tried so hard, but he was watching us closely and he only let me bring water."

"That's okay," he said softly. He wasn't hungry. He wasn't thirsty either, but he drank with a grateful expression because he knew that it was what Tish needed.

"We're going to get out of here, right, Jack?"

"Yeah. I swear."

"When?" The naive hope on her face broke his heart.

He parted his lips to reassure her: _Soon_ , but he caught himself at the final moment. Was that brave, promising her hope? Or was it arrogant, artificially preserving her faith in him until it became impossible to perserve? How could he face her tomorrow, the next day, weeks from now, knowing that she expected him to bust out of there and save them all any minute, but secretly doubting more and more that he could manage it with each passing day? He could shut her out. Run, in mind if not in body. He wondered if he had the power to keep someone enthralled for a century.

Jack had taken too long to answer. Tish’s face fell.

"No! Don't cry," he rushed to reassure her. "I don't know when just yet, but you will make it out of here."

"It's hopeless, isn't it?"

" _No_ ," he groaned. "I'm trying, Tish, I really am. And so is the Doctor, and so is Martha. We'll make a miracle."

"How?" Tears started to drip down her face and she wiped them away furiously. "You're already doing the impossible. What more can you do? You don't have to lie to me."

 _Yes, I do._ But he was lightheaded, and he couldn't seem to get enough air into his lungs to be convincing. In fact, he couldn't speak. He swayed, and feared he might have fallen if it wasn't for those cursed chains. He was useless. He raised his eyes to hers in shame.

Tish had stopped crying. She looked stoically back at him. She knew that he was dying.

"Don't you dare,” he finally got out. She nodded firmly. Reaching out, she placed her hand gently on his cheek. Then she was gone.

 

**Day 25**

Late into the night on the twenty-fifth day of his captivity, Captain Jack Harkness died of dehydration and starvation.

It took a full hour for his body to reform itself around the shell until he had a semblance of health strong enough to sustain life.


	2. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished this story over a year ago, but I've never really stopped thinking about it. Part of what I wanted to explore with this story was human perspective, and how flawed our perceptions can be. I militantly stuck to Jack's perspective in this story mostly as a personal writing challenge. But over the past year I've found myself writing new pieces of the story from another angle, that of an onlooker. I couldn't fit them into a new story and I couldn't throw them away. They belonged as part of this.
> 
> So I decided I might as well include this interlude. It starts and ends with brief pieces from Chapter Two of the original story, for context. It took me a year to write.

**Interlude**

 

 

**JACK**

 

**Day 39**

One of the guards brings his food, the young one, eyes down. Jack catches him before he can shuffle out of the door.

"Hey! What's your name?"

The kid's back stiffens, but he doesn’t look up. Jack considers if he’s doing the kid a disservice by pulling his identity back from the compartment in which it had been buried—personality, conscience, memory all encapsulated in a name the boy likely hasn’t heard in a long time. Jack wonders if he’s supposed to care.

"John," the boy finally answers.

"John," Jack sounds the syllable out roundly, feeling how his teeth click and his jaw stretches. "Nice name. I knew a bloke named John. He wasn't so nice." The kid nods, jerkily, and tries to slide out the door. Jack is struck with a sudden panic. "John! Tell me why you're here."

The kid looks up, eyes vacant. "Why do you care?"

"Because you don't seem to, and I'm fucking bored. Do you have family?"

"A sister."

"Tell me her name."

"Carrie." The word comes out fast and low. It doesn’t belong in that place.

"Is she safe?"

"She's alive. The rest of my family isn't."

"So you make yourself responsible for her. That can get messy. Take it from me."

"What would you have me do?" John looks up. "What would you do? What are you doing?"

"I'm--"

"--No. I mean what would you do if you were in my position. If you had this." He points to the gun strapped to his hip. The words come out in a rush. "Because you can't protect them, and they only matter to him while you're alive, so maybe that's your best chance to save them. Maybe that’s what they'd want, because maybe by now they hate you. Maybe they know that what they’re going through is your fault. So is that what you would do? Stick a gun in your mouth?"

"There is no right thing to do."

"I know that. Tell me what you would do."

Jack closes his eyes. He supposes it was wrong of him to force John to dredge these questions up, because now John is forcing him to face the same dilemmas. Jack almost wishes all of the guards were despicably blank faces again. He doesn’t want to face the fact that, after so many sacrifices, he still didn’t have an answer to the simplest of questions. "It wouldn't work," he hedges.

"Suppose it could. You could die. Would you?"

Jack Harkness thinks each of his words out carefully before voicing them. "John, if Carrie knew what you were doing for her, how brave and selfless you were, she would be proud of you. I know it's tough to keep remembering that, but you've got to. And you can. Right?"

"Yeah." John looks down again, and Jack feels a stab of guilt. He was the one who had made this boy consider his situation in the first place, and now here he is trying to sweep it all under the rug again. For a moment, he wonders what he has lost in pushing this boy away. He starts to speak, but then he’s wracked with another wave of nausea and loses track of time. When he uncurls and cracks his eyes open again, the boy is gone. He has to speak his parting message to an empty room:

“Remember that.”

 

**JOHN**

**Day 46**

John leans his head against the rusted metal doorframe, steeling himself. When he can stall no longer, he heaves open the door, nose wrinkling. Inside, the Captain is on a rack. A literal medieval device recreated in this the 21st century for this prisoner’s use. The Master has cultivated an elaborate environment for the sole benefit of this man.

John pads forward, eyes averted. His hands tremble, and some water spills over the rim of the mug and onto his clammy fingers. He doesn’t want to see the man’s blood. He doesn’t want to see the places the man has begun to tear.

“Can you swallow?” he asks tonelessly, eyes down at the shivering surface of the water. He hears only a muffled moan in response, which he takes as a no.

John wonders if the Captain knows that he will be remembered. He will be remembered by the Master and the Resistance alike as a brave man, a martyr, a hero. Those resisting aboard the Valiant rally around him time after time, and when his illusions of grandiosity falter the Master always turns to him. While the rest of the sufferers whither away and are forgotten, the Captain blazes.

Not for John. The Captain does not matter to him. Carrie matters to him, and by now she could be dead. That is the reality of life aboard the Valiant now. A reality that this man has never known.

John was instructed to give the Captain only water today, but now he sees that that is unnecessary. Almost as unnecessary as his fear. The implicit threat aboard the ship is that any one, any time, could end up with the same fate as the Captain. Only now does John realize the impossibility of this. There is no one else who could ever shine as brightly or fall as far as this man does on a daily basis, no one else who could serve as justification for the Master’s efforts or rebels’ deaths. The Captain is not like the rest of them. He is alone.

John stops averting his eyes and steps to the Captain’s side. He arranges his body so that his own back blocks the camera mounted on the ceiling, carelessly dribbles a thin stream of water onto the man’s face, uses his shielded hand to loosen the rack’s tension an invisible notch.

John leaves the room as quickly as he can, vowing as he does that he’ll never set foot in there again.

 

**Day 49**

John understands exactly what the Master means when he says that Tish is ‘busy’. He knows, and wishes he didn’t.

“Clean him up,” are the orders as John is pushed into that stinking room. By this point, he is tired and malleable. Easily bullied. But now he realizes that this is not something that he is willing to do.

 _Clean him up and help make him bloody again_.

 _Be a good little boy and think of your sister_.

Any act of goodwill feeds into this system of domination and terror as neatly as a cruelty, and John has the right to his own impotent rebellion.

 “Hello there.”

John finds himself staring. He can’t help it—he’s never seen the Captain like this. The man’s blue eyes are alert and piercing—a far cry from the clouded gray that defines him for John.

“Give that here.” Heavy hands momentarily cover his own frozen ones as the Captain takes the cloth and lukewarm water. He examines both, sighs, and takes a big swig of the liquid. Then he dips the cloth into it and methodically cleans the blood off of his chest.

John watches in silence, feeling inexplicably guilty.

When he’s finished, the Captain stands with a weary sigh. “You can go now.”

John leaves without having spoken a word and wishing more than ever that he could go back to before he ever entered that room.

 

**Day 52**

John sneaks into the kitchen at 2am. No one questions him. There’s a quiet camaraderie aboard the Valiant in the dark of night.

His next destination is a bit more noteworthy. The guards posted there are of the stony variety, but their orders only explicitly cover the event in which the individual inside the room is attempting to get out. John has no problem getting in.

He hates this room even more than he did the last time.

“Captain?” He waits. “Captain!”

“I’m listening,” the man says slowly without opening his eyes.

John realizes his back is pressed against the door and steps forward. “Is this a bad time?” he asks stupidly.

“Never better.” Eyes still closed.                      

“Are you… you okay?”

“No, I’m starving. Thanks for asking.”

“I brought food.”

“What does he want?”

“He didn’t send me.”

The man’s eyes snap open. Once again, they transform him. He looks not only alive, but feral, and John is now certain that he wants this man on his side, whatever that may be.

“Can you get me down?”

“No. I snuck in here.”

“Then you realize you’re going to have to feed me?”

At this point John would like nothing better than to turn tail and run, but he can hardly leave without doing what he has come here to do. Thought the Captain’s tone is nonchalant, his eyes keep straying to the cup of cold white mash in John’s hand. There’s nothing for it but to get it over with. He steps forward.

They both keep their eyes on the food as the Captain eats.

“Is Carrie dead?” the man asks between bites.

“No! I don’t think so. Why would you say that?”

The Captain laughs. “Helping me—not a good idea for anyone who has something left to lose.”

“I’m not helping you,” John says defensively. “It’s just basic human decency.”

“No such thing.”

They both return their attention to the food.

“You need to get out of here,” the Captain says eventually.

“Well, so do you.”

“Let’s be realistic. You shouldn’t die here, John.” The Captain gives him a heartbroken look, and for a moment John is sure that this man knows something more than he’s letting on.

Then the look has passed. “Um. That’s the last of it.” John sticks the cup in his back pocket. “I’m gonna go now.”

“Thank you.” The Captain’s eyes are closed again. Conserving energy, John thinks.

“Good night.” John makes himself walk instead of run out the door.

 

**Day 53**

John knows something is wrong the instant he wakes up. It has to do with the crowd of guards surrounding his bunk. One still has a hand on his shoulder from shaking him awake.

He pulls his boots on and follows mutely, unsurprised when they end up in front of the same metal door he snuck to the night before.

The Master himself meets him there. “Hello, boy.”

It’s the first time the Time Lord has spoken directly to him. John’s mind doesn’t dare move.

The Time Lord smiles indulgently, as if he’s used to this reaction. “I have cameras in the Captain’s room,” he says conversationally. “I enjoyed some particularly interesting viewing last night. Featuring you, of all people!” The man shrugs. “Since you showed an interest in this particular project of mine, I reckoned I’d give you a chance to get involved.”

“No. Please.” He can’t think.

“Thank you so for coming.” At an unseen signal the other guards grab John by the shoulders, open the cell door and throw him inside. Their faces are blank. The Master follows him in and locks the door. And the click of the lock, the Captain’s eyes snap open.

John scans the other men’s faces frantically, hoping for at the very least a reassuring smile from the one he risked his life to help. Both ignore him, intent on each other. It is anger at this that finally gives him the courage to speak.

“What do you want?”

He is rewarded with identical expressions of surprise. “So eager,” the Time Lord coos. “Here, then.” He lobs a baggie of little metal pieces and John catches it on reflex, slowly coming unfrozen. Then the Master addresses the Captain. “You’ll be relieved to hear that I’ve found something more effective than the shock collar.”

“Thrilled. John, did the back of his head bruise up nicely?” The man doesn’t break eye contact, but throws a small grin John’s way.

John can’t help grinning back. “Yeah. It did.” He had noticed the edge of a yellowish bruise creeping down the Master’s neck.

“Enough of that,” the Time Lord growls.

“He doesn’t like being third-wheeled,” the Captain explains.

John steels himself. _This is it._ “Do it,” he orders the Time Lord. “Get whatever it is you’re going to do to me over with.”

The Master feigns surprise. “Whatever are you talking about? I never said I was going to do anything to you.”

John rises to the bait. “Then why am I here?”

“I told you. To help.”

 _To help. To help. To help._ He repeats the words in his mind. It’s better than processing them. 

“Those are electrodes you’ve got there. We’re going to put them in Jacky, here. Isn’t that clever? Once your skin heals around them, they’re a part of you! They’ll stay inside no matter how many times you come back, and I can activate them anywhere I want with this!”

 _Laser screwdriver_ , John thinks dully.

“Ready?”

Instead of responding, Jack curls in on himself and goes limp. The bottom drops out of John’s stomach. _No . No. No._

“Don’t worry, John.” The Master speaks right in his ear. “He’s just trying to fool us. He can still feel it.” The Time Lord unfastens one of Jack’s arms and watches it flop down. “Start with in between his fingers.”

“What? You—you can’t—“

“This is your only warning, boy. If you do not follow my orders immediately and exactly, I will lock you and all of the other guards in this room and set it on fire. The lot of you are replaceable. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good.” And he waits.

John tries to convince himself that he’s running out of the room as he slips a trembling hand into the bag and pulls out one of the little metal pieces. It’s smaller than a pencil eraser, and glints in the harsh light. He imagines himself sprinting through the hall as he takes the Captain’s hand and examines the webbing between the fingers. The pain of a lacerated hand should pale in comparison to the pain of burning alive. John’s not sure how the pain of this particular lacerated hand is going to fit into that equation.

He imagines throwing himself off of the ship and into the sky as he makes the first cut.

The Captain’s fingers twitch slightly, convincing John that he does, in fact, feel it. John closes his eyes. He opens them. He makes a second cut, and listens to the hitch in the man’s breathing. He makes a third. He can’t believe that he is doing this, and the technical impossibility of the fact keeps the full weight of it from hitting him as he tries to nudge the first bead into the man’s flesh while disturbing it as little as possible.

John remembers the Captain he encountered before, the one as fierce and terrified as a cornered beast, and wonders how that man can keep his hand still while unanesthetized surgery is performed on it. It doesn’t make sense. John can’t process it. This gets him all of the way through the first hand and part of the way into the second.

There’s less blood than he expects. The wounds are so small that he’s almost able to minimize the damage in his mind. He’s mostly just tearing through skin. He can’t touch what’s underneath. He finishes with the second hand.

John almost throws up when the Master instructs him to insert two more beads of metal into the backs of the man’s knees.

As before, John knows not to hesitate, but he bites straight through his own lip as he makes the first incision. He tries to avoid anything vital, but the back of the knee is full of tendons and articulating cartilage, and the Captain screams under the knife.

“I’m so sorry,” John whispers frantically. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” The only way out of this he can see is through. The man collapses with a scream as he slices through the back of the second knee. There’s no question now about who feels what, as the Captain pants and tears slide freely down Jon’s face and the Master’s lips quirk up in a slight smile.

John throws up on the floor, and then continues to do as he is told.

He wishes he were doing something different, something brave, but he can’t think of anything brave that wouldn’t bring more pain on all of them. He can’t think of anything to do that he could both live with and survive the consequences of. So he does what he is told, hands following the Captain as he strains as far away as the constraints will allow. The man at the most can only move a few inches, and with both hands once again secured upward he can’t even turn his head. John almost throws up again.

John will never offer the Captain help again. He wonders if the man would ever trust him if he tried. It would be so much easier for this all to go up in flames.

After this final procedure, the Time Lord orders John to kill the Captain so that the lacerations will heal around their contents. John slits the man’s throat before the Master can mandate a more painful method. They watch together as the skin and tissue reform over the glinting bits of metal.

The Captain comes back to life with a shout, the Master whips out the laser screwdriver, and John plummets to the ground. He buries his face in his chest and tries to cover his ears, not willing to watch what this new tactic will do to the human in front of him. When the part that he can’t think about is over, he catches one final word:

“Effective.”

When instructed, John pulls himself up and walks out the door. He tries not to hear Jack’s last words, but they are directed at him. They slice through his numbness like a knife, lacerating the only shield he’s been able to conjure.

“It’s okay, John.”

 

 

**JACK**

 

**Day 62**

Jack realized that, the last few times the guards had come for him, the young one hadn’t been with them. He asked Francine what had happened to John the Kid.

“He put a gun in his mouth.”

_Remember that._

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 26**

Jack flexed each of his new muscles, reveling in the strength and control exhaustion had deprived him of. He grinned experimentally, and it felt good. "Captain Jack Harkness," he whispered into the emptiness, and waited for a desperate and puny creature to come and gloat.

It was Tish who came first, already curled in on herself in anticipation of a flinch. Her eyes lit up when she saw him standing there proudly.

"You came back," she breathed.

"Of course."

"That's impossible."

"That's me."

"He's just going to kill you again." She faltered.

"And I'm going to keep coming back. You're not getting rid of me that easily." He tried to wink at her but she looked away.

"How long before you give up?" she whispered.

"I don't give up. If I did I wouldn't be here." His mind flashed back to something that the Time Lord had said, something impossible and absurd, but that man didn't warrant even a moment of thought. "He's weak. Saxon." He would not say 'Master'. "This is just a show of strength, for his own benefit as much as ours. It's all to cover the fact that he's alone. He only has as much as we give him. You don't give it to him, okay? Don't give him a reason to hurt you."

"Isn't that what you're doing:?"

"I've got lower stakes." _Hear that, Francine?_

"No, I don't really think you do. Even if you're willing to throw your _own_ life away..."

_NO._

"I don't want anyone else to suffer needlessly. That's all." His breath caught at the sudden danger of the conversation. He knew that nothing said on this ship was secret. To his relief, Tish took the hint and stopped speaking. She just smiled softly as she gave him water and a moment later was gone.

 _Ianto Jones._ The name rose to his lips unbidden, and he had to stifle it. Something that he had been distinctly _not_ thinking about since he was thinking again was fighting for acknowledgement. Unable to repress it anymore, he tried to deprive it of its emotional weight.

Bare bones, it was a matter of leverage.

How could he turn this around? What was it that his captor really needed from him, and how could he withhold or proffer that in order to protect those that he was going to keep safe? He involuntarily shuddered at the thought of choosing between those two options--he could imagine highly unpleasant scenarios resulting from either decision. But that wasn't the way to think about this-- that was _him_ , and it was already acknowledged that this was going to severely suck for him but he'd lived through some pretty agonizing things before and this was just another challenge. He alone did not matter-- Jack at that moment wasn't sure he would argue that he didn't deserve whatever it was that he was going to get here.

He'd already done it himself to plenty of people.

"Jacky-boy!"

It was tough to argue that anyone could come out of that a hero.

"I must say, Captain, I didn't expect you to live that long. You've got some serious endurance. Unless you had help...."

 _Does he know about Francine?_ Jack's mind raced. _No_ , he fervently reassured himself. The master was just trying to trip him up.

He didn't respond. The master stepped up, slapped him. "I said hello, freak." Jack stared coolly back. "I'll kill you again," his captor warned.

Jack laughed slightly.

"Your bravery will get you nowhere here. You have no power. You have nothing."

Jack carefully noted and stored this information.

"All that you have is my good will," the man continued. "I can't permanently hurt you, but I can them. I can kill them. You can't stop me from murdering your precious Doctor."

"I don't have to. You could never kill him."

"What do you mean I can't kill him? You're wrong. You're so, so wrong--I can do anything. This is my ship. This is my planet, now! You're a little speck that should've died centuries ago and I'm one of the last--"

"You're one of the last. If you kill him you'll be all alone. And you can _never_ be alone."

"Psychoanalysis over, Jacky-boy. I'm getting tired of you." Saxon’s grin was as wide as ever but it today his eyes were strained. "It's time I found your little kiddies. We'll see how talkative you are when Torchwood is on the line."

"If you touch any of them," Jack said very deliberately, "I swear that I will hunt you down for the rest of my life. And it looks like that is going to be quite a while." 

The Time Lord didn't respond immediately. Jack knew that they were both wondering the same thing: could he be a prisoner forever?

It was distinctly possible, but Jack would never admit that.

"We'll see," Saxon finally answered quietly. Jack wasn't sure whether he was answering the spoken or the unspoken communication. Regardless, he drifted away, leaving Jack more intact than he had been since he had woken up weeks ago to find someone sitting vigil over his body.

Jack so wanted to talk to Gwen, to hear her voice. She'd understand something about Saxon that he didn't, something that he could use. She'd tell him he could do anything, and believe it, too. He could use that unwavering confidence right now.

 

**Day 30**

When Harold Saxon waltzed in the next day, a gleeful smile on his face, Jack felt the first niggling of true fear. So he reacted with his biggest smile. "Gorgeous day, isn't it?"

"Mm." This time the prime minister drew out a knife. Jack repressed his shudder. "I'm growing tired of your facade, Jack. I want to know who you really are."

"I'm a Capricorn, my favourite colour is blue and I enjoy long walks on the beach. How about you?"

"Oh, I think there's much more to you than that. More than even you know. And I will discover it all. But for now, I'm going to have to settle for some more topical facts. For example, how exactly does this coming back to life thing work?"

It was an honest question, so Jack responded before he could catch himself. "I don't know."

"Well, we've got time." Jack held himself rigid for a moment to repress his shudder. "To start with, I would like to know how long it takes you to bleed out."

"As long as anyone, I'd expect." He tried to sound disinterested.

"Hm..." said Saxon again. Then, before Jack had a chance to react, his hand flashed out and drew the knife along Jack's forearm. The cut was shallow, but long, and Jack jerked violently. He had to bite down on his tongue to stay silent, but he resolved that he would not cry out.

Before he had a chance to prepare himself, Saxon’s hand flashed again and he slashed a matching cut across Jack's other forearm.

Jack closed his eyes and threw his head back, lips pressed tightly together. He'd been tortured before, plenty of times. He could endure this, no problem. He was going to have to. He steeled himself for more pain.

He wasn't prepared for the feel of the Time Lord’s cold and gentle fingers against his skin as he gently untucked Jack's shirt and pulled it up. He was so focused on the unwanted tenderness that he again had to bite down on his tongue when the blade was drawn sharply across his ribs. He cursed himself for losing concentration for a moment.

"That's three, Jack." The words were against his ear. "How many more do you think it will take?" Jack didn't respond. But when the man grabbed his wrist and dug his fingers deep into the raw wound there, he couldn't prevent a hiss of air from escaping his lips. "I asked you a question, freak."

"I don't know," Jack whispered, defeated.

"Good. Let's find out." Saxon stepped around behind him, pulling his shirt entirely free of his pants. Jack did not allow himself to react to the feel of his cold hands against his back. He didn't care. He didn't care at all.

He kept his eyes closed and his mouth shut as the man sawed through the ropy muscles of his back on the right side in a single, sharp motion. But the man cut through the other side as Jack was gasping in a breath, and an embarrassing sob escaped him.

"What was that, Jack? Answer me. _Answer me_." When the Time Lord shook him, dragged the knife across the already torn skin on his back, Jack opened his eyes and glared, but he did not speak. "This isn't a good idea," the man warned. "You're going to give me everything I want, and it'll be better for you if it's sooner rather than later."

Jack did speak then. "Never."

Saxon laughed, but there was no humour in it. "Dazzling, aren't you? Now I see why they follow you so blindly. You fancy yourself a hero. You think you're impenetrable. Well, I'm going to prove you wrong."

With that he knelt and rolled both of Jack's trouser legs up to his knees. Jack looked up again, desperately searching the ceiling for distraction, unwilling to even look at what was happening below. He could feel the blood loss from his other wounds beginning to take its toll. He was going to die soon. He was weakening.

Perhaps Saxon realized it, because the next two cuts were deeper than the others. The knife bit into the back of Jack's calves, nearly to the bone, and he had a moment of anguish as he struggled to stay upright. He would _not_ go to his knees in front of the Time Lord. But there was no way that his already tortured legs could bear his weight after such treatment, and he collapsed. He was gratefully saved by the chains on his wrists, which didn’t allow him to fall more than half of a foot. The strain on his shoulders was excruciating, but even that sensation was beginning to fade.

He grinned triumphantly. "Ha..." he slurred. "Dying."

His last memory of that life was the Harold Saxon’s face contorting into an inhuman mask of fury as he stabbed Jack through to the heart.

 

**Day 31**

_Make up your mind you are strong enough._

 

**Day 34**

Tish fed him his single meal with whispers that morning.

"Gonna try something," she hissed. "Tomorrow. If we get you down, can you try for the TARDIS?"

Jack nodded, impressed by her succinctness. Perhaps she had a future in espionage. He laughed and winked lasciviously, just in case they were watched.

She blushed and hid her face, hiding her returning nod in the process. Special Agent Tish Jones.

Relief washed over him as she left. This was exactly what he had been waiting for. He specialized in insane escape attempts. And his role here was as a decoy, bullet cushion. How could he fuck that up?

 

**Day 35**

How could he, indeed?

It depended, he supposed, on how one defined the parameters for the escape attempt. If, for example, one was hoping that he, the Doctor, and Martha's family actually escaped the clutches of their sadistic captor to mount a resistance on the ground, then their mission was a resounding failure.

But who had bothered to hope for that?

This is what Jack learned: The toclafane were fast, faster than even the Doctor had imagined. One of the guards, an older one named Oliver, had the sympathy, guts, and brains to help Jack escape without getting his sorry ass sliced to ribbons. Judging by the exterior of his cell, Harold Saxon valued his immortal prisoner more than he let on. Also, it felt so good to run again.

So, they failed. Punishment was yet to be meted out, but Jack consoled himself with the pleasure that Saxon seemed to get out of his domestic charades and taunting. He wouldn't do any severe harm to the Jones or the Doctor, right? And what could he do to Jack, anyway? Kill him? Ha.

 _Been there, done that_.

 

**Day 36**

The guards marched him through the bowels of the Valiant and onto the bridge. Oliver was behind him, if it came to a skirmish. The captain was in front and a boy, looking barely twenty in his too-crisp uniform, was one of those marching beside. He marked them out in his peripheral vision, but realised that, if it came to it, there really wasn't anyone here he would be okay hurting.

Best not come to that.

Jack stopped dead when they reached the bridge. He hadn't really been paying attention last time he'd been here, saving the world and all that, but he was still surprised he hadn't noticed how _big_ it was. Perhaps it was the skylights and expansive windows, offering a tantalizing view of the nothingness they floated in. Perhaps it was the grand, sweeping style of the ornamentation and furniture it had been outfitted with in the past month. But perhaps it was the veritable sea of faces that somehow failed to fill the space.

"Welcome, Captain!" Saxon boomed from across the cavern.

There really weren't that many faces. Just the crew of the Valiant, the Joneses, a handful of bedraggled-looking prisoners he was relieved not to recognize and, or course, the Doctor. But given that he had spent the last monthish in near-isolation...

"We've been waiting for you."

He was relieved to see that no one looked the least bit worse for wear. Though they were arrayed curiously, all facing the same direction, almost like an audience--

“After all, you are the evening's entertainment!"

It was then that Jack noticed the object in the middle of the room.

And everything was horribly clear.

Four thick panes of glass rose from a sturdy base to meet a top of the same material seven or eight feet off of the ground. It was like an elongated transparent cube. A hinge on one side allowed it to be open or shut and a tight seal secured its position. It was placed in the exact center, so that Saxon and the audience would have equally fabulous views.

Of the show.

 _All he can do is kill me. All he can do is kill me_ , Jack repeated to himself as the guards maneuvered him closer. He was curious despite himself. Were there spikes hidden in the seemingly smooth walls? Or knives, shielded by some gratuitously fancy Time Lord technology? He shot a little grin out in the direction of the audience, just to show he wasn't scared. This is what he had been agreeing to, two days ago when he spoke to Tish. Not escaping, but failing and bearing the brunt of the consequences for them so they wouldn't be afraid to try again.

As they finally reached it, Jack noticed that there was something in there. A sort of harness, at chest height, attached to the wall. A collar just above it, also firmly attached. Well, that was clear enough.

"Now strip him."

"What? No!" Jack shook off the guards that dutifully grabbed him. "What has that got to do with anything?"

"You only have the one set of clothes. We wouldn't want them to get... wet."

 _With what?_ "I'll take that risk, thank you!" He was normally quite fine naked in front a crowd, but he had the feeling that this time it would not be to his benefit.

"One more word and I will have you gagged. And, trust me, that will make this significantly more difficult for you."

This was just another aspect of punishment. Jack knew firsthand how torturers broke down their victims. He knew it, and he could deal with it. He stood woodenly as he was stripped completely. A guard opened the door of the box.

With a gracious smile, Jack stepped in.

They attached the harness around his upper body, his back ramrod straight against the back of the cell. Completely exposed, straight at the audience. Then the door was closed, and everything was muffled. He waited with mounting anxiety. Did this thing conduct electricity? Was it filling with gas?

Then he heard it.

A low gurgling coming from beneath his feet. He felt frigid water lap at his toes, but still he looked down numbly, not believing what he was seeing. Everything else bled away as the water steadily rose.

It was fast, so fast, and loud. It drowned out the man addressing the audience with wild gesticulations just in front of him. Now that he knew what to listen for, it was all he could hear. Soon water was lapping at his ankles, then rising over his calves. He purposefully counted out his inhales, practicing round breathing. Hyperventilation was not for places with a limited air supply.

The seal on the door was secure. No water was leaking out. He gently tested the straps holding him in place, not wanting to alarm anyone. They crowd was all watching, now, as the cold slid up his hips. The maniac must be done talking. The most important thing here was his reaction. That was why he was in front of a crowd, so he would cave in under the pressure and so they could see it. _"See, this is what happens when you disobey me. The freak suffers."_ His part in the escape attempt wasn't over. Jack couldn’t let them lose hope.

Goosebumps stood out on his remaining exposed skin as the water level crept up his chest. He understood the whole drowning thing, but did it really have to be so _cold_?

He counted out his breaths, forcibly maintaining the rhythm, and timed it so that he took a large inhale just as the water slipped over his nose. Then it was over his ears and everything was silent.

The water-flecked glass had distorted the faces, but now that his eyes were under he could see everything. It seemed so damn tranquil, for a moment. The heavy silence distanced him. He felt like he was the audience, and they were splayed out on a cinema screen, one of those insanely boring films Gwen or Ianto sometimes dragged him to. And the burning lungs were just the remnants a few-days-old injury. One he hadn't even bothered reporting to Owen, because he could swallow painkillers as good as anyone and weevil scratches healed quickly.

 _Right. Weevil scratches. Strong. Don't breathe_. The words floated across his vision in a vaguely reddish colour. Now his whole body seemed to burn from the strain of holding his breath. There was a lurch and then true silence, as the water finally shut off. Just inches above his head, but so unreachable. So there was no point in straining against the bonds. No point at all, and so he wouldn't. He would rather like to inhale, though.

Then he saw it. Out of the corner of his eye, in the Master's hand. A stopwatch. It was a gasping laugh that allowed the water to rush in.

Then he was burning for real, all over, and it really wasn't that funny anymore. Reflexes took over and he gasped the water, coating his lungs in death. But it couldn't be that easy, oh no, and he found himself longing for the speed of a bullet to the heart, as he lost control of his whole body, shaking and tearing in a panicked attempt to escape the inevitable. He forced the last bubbles of air out in a scream.

\----

His first gasp of life was coarse and wet. His second was diluted acidic, as his stomach began the disquieting process of emptying itself of unwelcome items. He doubled over, or tried to, realizing that the water had been drained and the harness kept him upright, through death. He spewed until all that was left was dry heaves, shaking, his throat raw, and then he realized that the audience was still there, he was still naked, and there was sick all over him.

_Not my best day._

The rushing began again, and it might as well have been acid lapping at his toes.

Drowning once was bad, but drowning again immediately after coming back to life, when the memory of the pain and terror was still fresh in his mind, was so much worse. He couldn't do it, he just couldn't. Trembling overtook his body and he understood a second use for the firm harness. He tore at it, cutting into his own skin, kicking at the opposite wall when he gave that up. He realized how tight the thing, the _tank_ was. The glass of the opposite wall was only a few inches from his nose. He couldn't get much of a good kick in. Not that there was any chance of this thing being composed of kickable glass anyway. All he did was splash around like a child. A panicked child. Jack vaguely remembered something about that, a goal, but the rushing was too loud to focus.

As water crept up his chest he tried jumping, which the collar effectively stymied. It was going to happen again. Oh, god, it was happening again. He strained upward, tilting his head to get in that last shallow gasp of air before he was submerged.

Then he was, and he heard nothing but the dull roar, and this time it was hardly peaceful. He kept struggling, stupidly wasting his air in useless exertion and a sharp exhalation then, before he knew it, he was red again and burning, and either there was water on the outside of the tank or someone was crying in front of him, and he remembered too late that he was supposed to be inspiring the other captives, but by then he was dying and couldn't remember why.

\----

Once Jack had finally coughed up everything inside of him, he took stock of the situation. It was a matter of seconds until the water began, he was sure of it, but for the time being everything was silent. He had already examined his prison so he looked out, and took stock of his audience. Tish was crumpled against her mother. The Doctor's eyes were wet. The youngest guard was turned half away. Only the captain looked him in the face, blankly, a show of stoicism.

Everything was so simple in the silence.

Once the water began again, Jack lost every inch of calm. His resolve slipped along with his mind, as he again fought the impossible. But as the water slipped over his head and he was thrust into that tranquil world, the face in his mind was that of the nameless captain, stoic and withdrawn, and he knew what he had to do. He looked quite deliberately at the Doctor, and he inhaled.

Captain Jack Harkness chose his time to die.

\----

It didn't stop. The only time constraint was Saxon's attention span, which seemed to be quite long where drowning was concerned. Jack lost count of the deaths, and by the time the Lord of All finally called it, every person watching had broken. Well, every person except one.

Finally the guards were permitted to open the door, undo the straps, help him shivering and trembling out of the tank. He didn't look any of them in the eye, concentrating solely on not embarrassing himself by throwing up on the floor. They economically patted him down and slipped him into his clothes, then silently marched him out, and all the time he looked down. His thoughts were stuck on reverse, reliving each and every moment that he had chosen or been forced to inhale water.

The Valiant was where Jack learned to drown.

 

**Day 39**

One of the guards brought his food, the young one, eyes down. Jack caught him before he could shuffle out of the door.

"Hey! What's your name?"

The kid's back stiffened, but he didn't look up. Jack considered if he was doing the kid a disservice by pulling his identity, composed of personality, conscience, and memory and encapsulated in a name, back from the secret place it had been shut. He wondered if he should care.

"John."

"John," Jack sounded the syllable out roundly. "Nice name. I knew a bloke named John. He wasn't so nice." The kid nodded, jerkily, and tried to slide out the door. "John! Tell me why you're here."

The kid looked up, then, eyes vacant. "Why do you care?"

"Because you don't seem to, and I'm fucking bored. Do you have family?"

"... a sister."

"Say her name."

"Fine... Carrie." The word came out fast and low. It didn't belong here.

"Is she safe?"

"...she's alive. The rest of my family isn't."

"So you make yourself responsible for her. That can get messy. Take it from me."

"What would you have me do?" John burst out. "What would you do? What are you doing?"

"I'm--"

"--No. What would you do if you had--this." He pointed to the gun strapped to his hip. "Because you can't save them, and they only matter while you're alive, so maybe that's your best chance. Maybe they'd want that, because maybe they hate you. Maybe they know that it's your fault. So is that the right thing to do, to take this and stick it in your mouth?"

"There is no right thing to do."

"Would you?"

Jack closed his eyes. He supposed it was wrong to force John to dredge these questions up, because now John was turning the tables. He almost wished all of the guards were despicably blank faces again. "It wouldn't work," he hedged.

"Suppose it could. It did. Would you?"

Jack Harkness thought each of his words out carefully before voicing them. "John, if Carrie knew what you were doing for her, how brave and selfless you were, she would be proud of you. I know it's tough to keep remembering that, but you've got to. And you can. Right?"

"Yeah." John was back to a kid again, head down and eyes shallow. Jack could only hope his words were being heard. God, this was not a conversation he had expected to be having with someone complicit in his captivity.

"Good. Remember that." There was a dismissal in the words and John fled. Jack repeated the words to himself. "Remember that." They sounded absurdly contrived.

 

**Day 47**

Jack Harkness was bored. What he missed most was not the nonstop action, the high stakes and the triumph. It was the banter. More and more, he found himself delving into fond memories of recent years at Torchwood, and more and more, those memories were ones of piling five on a couch that was made for two, laughing and shoving and mocking.

Sometimes, all too often, he had felt like the adult in a den of children. He was the one who made the tough decisions and did the horrific necessities. So it was glorious to fling himself across Owen and Gwen's laps and try to steal their pizza. They all knew each other so well; once they really got into it he'd be supplying Owen's complaints before the doctor could boast them and Ianto would be finishing Tosh's sentences. Someone would accidentally ruin Owen's favourite jacket with pizza grease. He would get all affronted. Ianto would question his manhood. Owen would respond in turn. Jack would sit back and watch them as things escalated, and he would feel so at home.

He wondered where they were. Either they were even more incompetent than he believed, or they had by that point noticed that the planet was being ruled by a hostile maniac and little alien metal balls.

Ianto would think that was funny.

It was day forty-eight that he began talking to them.

 

**Day 48**

It felt kind of stupid. Like that time a somewhat hastily-activated device had turned Owen invisible and Jack had been forced to spend a day talking to what looked like thin air.

But at least that had been fun, and right now he was bored.

So he tried to imagine what Owen might say. Wasn't tough.

"Get up off your lazy ass and do something."

That was neither entertaining nor feasible, so he moved down the queue.

Ianto would suggest a shower. Similarly infeasible.

Gwen would probably give him a hug and then punch someone. Nice, but didn't promote scintillating conversation.

Honestly, it was Tosh that he really wanted to talk to. He wanted to know if she had figured out Archangel, devised some way to disrupt the Master's plans. He wanted to know if she was okay and safe. If anyone could destroy this empire, it was her. _And you'd better be alive to do it_ , he imagined warning her.

The words floated back to him, manufactured in the recesses of his own mind: _"I will_."

 

**Day 51**

The Master had paid him a visit yesterday, leaving him alive but beaten. He didn't know the full extent of the damage, but the look on Tish's face when she saw him gave enough of an indication.

"I'm sorry." He tried to speak without moving his lips.

She got right up in his face. "You _idiot_." Then she left.

Sometimes people didn't make any sense.

As the day went on he scrabbled to fill his head with nothing. He had always sucked at meditation, much to his family's chagrin. It was the only subject he failed in, really. He just couldn't shut off, he couldn't make himself, let himself, didn't they see?

He kept feeling the pain from yesterday in vividly dusty splashes of memory, but it wasn’t the impact, it was the lethargy. The exact feeling as strength was robbed of him, blow by blow. He was bound to start but the Master cut him free near the end. After he had lost the ability to really do anything. Or was it? Had he just given up? Given in?

" _You can't_ _do that_."

_I'm trying, goddammit._

_"Well, try harder. You've lived long enough. Don't tell me a little pain is all it takes to stop you?"_

No. Stop. This wasn't Gwen. She wouldn't say that. He was remembering her wrong. Or was he? How could that could be a question, how could he possibly be forgetting things like this?

 _"You fucking coward_ , he imagined Owen saying. _"What does it matter? Get out of your head and focus on getting out of there_.”

But his head was his only sanctuary. How could he leave that?

 _"How could you leave us?"_ Ianto.

"No!" Jack gathered and _threw_ the voices away, far from him. He didn't need this. It wasn't part of him.

One by one, broken but surviving, they crept back.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Three**

**Day 55**

"I've got a book to read, so it'll have to be a quiet one today."

"I get really quiet when you let me sleep."

"And deprive you of my company? What kind of host would that make me?"

"One that I might visit again."

"Ah, that's where you're wrong. I have no intention of actually letting you leave. Come on in, boys." Saxon waved in his entourage of guards, none of whom looked like they were enjoying this. John brought in an armchair and the Time Lord sank luxuriously into it, forcing the captain of the guard to give the order.

He did so reluctantly: "Set him up."

Jack planned to swing a few punches once his hands were free but he never got the chance. One guard kicked his feet away from the wall while another placed metal cube behind him, between him and the sheet of corrugated metal. He twisted around to get a good look at it. It was covered in spikes. Honest-to-god spikes, like something out of a medieval prison. It couldn't have been more than a foot high, though.

"Oh, I'm sorry. How inhospitable of me." The Master gestured to his reclined posture. "I haven't offered you a seat. Sit."

Somewhere someone operated a hidden mechanism and his chains went suddenly slack. He fell backwards, in a sitting position, and caught himself just before actually putting his weight on the thing. He hurriedly stood.

"No, I said _sit._ " The Master waited. No body moved. He sighed theatrically, then pointed at one of the guards himself. "You."

The selected man strode purposefully forward, eyes averted. He detached Jack's manacles from the chains and swiftly clicked them into a ring on the wall behind him, shoving Jack into a crouch with one hand so that he could reach the ring. It was only a few inches above the top of the box. Now Jack was sitting, or close to it. He was actually crouched, with almost all of his weight on his thighs. He didn't believe the spikes could hold his weight, and he didn't want to try. From the right angle it might have looked cozy, him with the relaxing and The Master with the book.

The Time Lord looked up from his scintillating read to smile. "Now that's better." Then he waved the guards again and returned to his book.

"You fucking coward. What the hell is wrong with you? You're so damn scared of me that you have to pay people to tie me up. You're so scared of the Doctor, a man who would never hurt a hair on your head, that you have to age him thousands of years just to feel safe around him."

The Time Lord stepped in when Jack paused for breath. "You're not going to anger me into killing you quickly, so I'll have some of that quiet, if you don't mind."

"Like hell I'll be quiet! If it's one thing I can do, it's talk, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"I can cut out your tongue," the Master offered helpfully.

"And go crazy from boredom. Admit it. You like talking to me." Sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

"Save your breath. You'll need it soon."

He needed it already. His thighs were burning. "Where's my team?" he half screamed. "Tell me that! It's not like you have any reason to hide it. No? Nothing? Don't tell me you still haven't _caught_ them?"

The Master sighed, torn away from his book yet again. "Just be patient, Jacky-boy. I'll get there. It took me a week to discover your 'secret' organisation. How long do you really think they can rebel against me?"

 _That's my kids_. "Some of them may be lacking is subtlety, I'll give you that, but they're brave. All of them." He had to pause for breath. His legs were shaking uncontrollably." And they're smart. And most of all, no matter how much you might desperately wish them to, they won't ever give up..." He jerked desperately at the manacles, trying to gain an inch. An inch could save him. "You'll have to kill them."

"Then I will."

"Then why aren't they dead yet?"

" _Why aren't you?"_

"I was dead long ago."

"Well, in that case--" the Master stood and abruptly stormed out the door, leaving Jack baffled behind him. He still couldn't get used to his captor's quick changes of mood. The man was insane. He had to be.

Insane or not, he took Jack's chances of a quick death with him. Jack panted loosely, unable to shift position. Legs burning. He was going to fall soon, and it was going to hurt. He almost wanted to get it over with but, if the Master wasn't entertained, he wouldn't let anyone come pull Jack off of the spikes once he bled out. He would wake up just to do it all over again.

"Fuck," he gasped out to the deserted room.

There was something left in the chair, he suddenly noticed. A small, round... He almost laughed out loud. It was a stopwatch, still running. The intended message was clear, but it was leagues from the thoughts that little piece of metal conjured. Jack latched onto that.

The rest wasn't worth remembering.

 

**Day 62**

Jack realized that, the last few times the guards had come for him, the young one hadn’t been with them. He asked Francine what had happened to John the Kid.

“He put a gun in his mouth.”

_Remember that._

 

**Day 68**

Tish played a badass espionage agent and Jack reprised his role as pincushion. Together they discovered another route that couldn’t get Jack to the Tardis before the Toclafane got to him.  The escape attempt failed.

It felt good to run.

 

**Day 69**

This was something new.

"So," Saxon began. "I think it's time you and I had a little talk, don't you?"

Jack twitched the right corner of his mouth. It was the only thing that he could move.

"That was a stupid thing that you did yesterday. Brave, but stupid. Firstly, because you had no chance of escape. But I think you knew that."

Jack flicked his eyes in acknowledgement.

"Secondly, because they wouldn't have come back for you. Your Doctor, how long was he gone? A hundred years? More? And even then, he had no intention of rescuing you from who knows what you had gotten into as a result of him. It's quite tragic, really. So, if you helped those people escape, that would mean that you were stuck with me, alone, forever. And, much as I've enjoyed our time together, I can't imagine you would want that."

Jack glared back, unable to speak. Not allowing himself to consider whether or not the words were true.

"You need to understand that. You need to understand that you are always, and completely, alone. So I've arranged a little demonstration." He snapped his fingers theatrically and two guards marched in, heads down. They unchained Jack and maneuvered him over to the back wall as the Master explained.

"As you have no doubt noticed, I had a put sedative in your food. It should wear off in three or four hours. It shouldn't be a major inconvenience for you. I just want you to have plenty of time to contemplate your situation before you make your move." The guards, Oliver and a faceless man, pinioned him against the wall, holding his arms out flat on either side of him, back against a thick wooden plank.

The Master produced two thick spikes, each nearly a centimeter in diameter and four or five inches long, wickedly sharpened at one end.

Much as Jack wanted to appear brave in front of the guards, for his sake as well as theirs, his physiological fear reaction was uncontrollable. His throat tightened until his mouth fell open in an attempt to keep breathing. Air raked across the back of his throat, causing soft sobs to escape his lips. Oliver grasped his wrist tighter, though Jack still couldn't move them. He wondered if it was an attempt at comfort.

The guard took the first spike and placed it over Jack's hand, the tip of it just brushing his palm. Time slowed until Jack was watching frame-by-frame.

Saxon produced a mallet and struck the flattened end of the spike, driving it through Jack's hand.

Jack’s scream came out as a low whine that sounded humiliatingly like a whimper.

The Time Lord with the mallet struck the spike again and again, until it bit deep into the wood. Three and a half inches protruded beyond Jack's ruined palm, and he knew this was only halfway done. He scrambled frantically for something he could say, some reaction he could give to satiate the sadist and prevent him from finishing the task, but before Jack could gather a semblance of sanity the remaining spike brushed his other palm and he lost it again.

He looked away this time, so the snapshots were different. A crack in the opposite wall. A closed fist, white-knuckled under the sleeve of the uniform. A tearful eye, looking straight at him. At his face, not down or away. He paid attention to that until the second spike was all the way in and the pain washed over him in waves and Saxon stepped back to admire his handiwork.

"Look at me, Jack," the Time Lord commanded. Jack's head swam. He didn't know where he was looking. " _Look at me._ " He latched onto the voice as a point of focus, and dragged his eyes up to meet the face. "Good, very good," the he crooned. "Now, as I said, the sedative should leave you paralyzed for about three or four hours." He paused for a reaction, but the painful prediction was lost on his prisoner. Mildly disgruntled, he continued. "After that, you should be free to move. However, here's the thing. I am not going to take those out of you. And neither is anyone else. I'll be watching, but you won't see me again until you manage to free yourself. Frankly, I'm curious how long it will take you. Those spikes are in pretty tightly, so my advice would be to tear your hands out of them, but it's your choice. And one more thing." He swiftly knelt and struck Jack's right foot with the mallet, splintering bones and forcing him to slump down, still too paralyzed to arrange his let leg so that it would support his weight. "Now I'll go. I'm sure you've been anxious for me to leave you alone. Hope to see you soon, freak." And he was gone.

Saxon's last stroke had left Jack with all of his weight on the spikes, and they had already begun to tear at his hands. The pain was excruciating. It radiated out from the wounds up his arms and into his head, driving him insane. And the foot, still placed where the guards had arranged it when propping him up, was now pressed against the floor. The pressure displaced the injured bone slightly.

He found he had regained some slight control of his face.

He screamed.

 

**Day 70**

He had no way to measure time. It could have been seconds or hours since the Master had left him in this dreadful game. By the time the sedative left his system he was too weak from blood loss and agony to notice.

This was insane. He'd done some pretty horrific things to people in his time, for some pretty terrible reasons, but this surpassed all of it. He would never do something like this to another human being.

He kept waiting for the pain to subside, but it never did. It was too much to be endured and he eventually drifted into a hallucinatory haze. Grotesque faces swam before him. He reached out to touch them, but was brought sharply back into reality and isolation with so much as an attempt at moving either of his hands. Everything brought him back here.

He eventually found he could move and so he did, sliding his left foot to the center so that he could stand on it. He was weak, so he braced himself back against the wall and hoped the posture would hold. It decreased the tension on his hands slightly. Enough for him to begin to think.

It was impossible, what the Master was proposing. He physically couldn't get out of this. There was no way he could get those spikes out without at least a free hand to work them with, regardless of the pain. He might've had a chance and bracing himself with his feet a levering himself off, but the Master had effectively stymied that by destroying his foot. Probably quite knowingly.

He had no choice but to just hope that someone would come. That the Master would get bored and pry him off for some more interactive games. Or perhaps that Tish would find him. The Master had said that no one would come, but he couldn't keep him isolated forever, could he? Two of the guards knew what was happening. Perhaps one of them could contrive to get him out.

Someone had to come for him. They had to. He couldn't endure this much longer.

 

**Day 71**

He wished they would hurry it up a bit.

At some point during the--obviously sleepless--night he slipped into fantasizing. It would be Owen who came. Stoic and utilitarian, he wouldn't heap pity on the Captain. He would pry him off and silently bandage his hands. Perhaps inject him with a massive dose of painkillers while he set his foot. He would keep the others away until the Captain was ready to be seen. As soon as they stepped in for the cheerful reunion he would snap back into his sardonic self, making them all more or less regretful that they needed a doctor in the first place.

Jack would be secretly grateful, though. For once, this particular venture didn't need to end in death.

It did, though. Much as he endeavored to keep his hands still, they kept moving slightly. Once he regained full control of his muscles, he tried to support his arms to release the strain on the wounds. But no one could hold their arms straight out at shoulder height for days, and all too soon they were trembling with exhaustion.

Each movement tore open anew the little bit that had managed to heal, and kept the blood flowing almost constantly. It was a slow death of blood loss, but a sure one. He could only hope the Master would give up in boredom once he noticed his prisoner dead.

It took him hours to wake back up, as his body struggled to reform itself around the foreign matter driven through it. Eventually it gave up and he woke with a scream.

 

**Day 72**

He was still pinioned, and still alone. In the limpness of death his body weight had dragged down still more on the wounds, tearing them open farther, and newly regenerated blood was flowing thickly. He was going to die again. This was going to continue, the death and regeneration, indefinitely and he was going to stay here, alone. No one was going to come for him.

They knew. Those two guards had been sympathetic and they knew exactly what was being done to him. They could have told everyone. Everyone on this ship who he had participated in this escape attempt for could know what he was enduring for their sakes, in their place, and still no one had come. It was too late. No one would ever come.

Captain Jack Harkness was alone.

Knowing that he would be strongest right after he came back to life, he rocked his hand back and forth, biting through his lip at the pain. But the spike was driven in deep, as he had been told, and all he was succeeding in doing was widening the gaping wound. He kept going, roaring in fury. _He_ didn't care who heard. Let them all know how strong he was. He was invincible. There was absolutely nothing that he could not endure, and he didn't need another living soul to help him. They were liabilities that he had no need of.

It was fruitless. He eventually even admitted it, but he kept going. When the blood loss began to affect his vision, he took the wavering as a sign that he had finally succeeded, that the entire world was bending under his strength. He tore it down.

\--

He was immensely disappointed to find the spikes just as deeply imbedded as ever.

 

**Day 74**

This was too long. It was weeks, he was sure, that he had been here. He didn't know how many times he had died, or how long it had taken each time. he couldn't count the number of times he had given up hope, then wrenched himself back again from the void with renewed vigor.

He didn't realize that his eyes had been closed until he opened them and was assaulted by the dim light. He didn't realize that all had been silent until he heard the scream.

A feminine scream. A girl's scream. Something had happened, and he was done with being useless.

He pushed his right palm forward, along the spike, his entire arm trembling with the effort. The pain doubled as the rough metal slid through the ragged edges of the wound, and still he kept going, centimeter by centimeter. In what the Master recorded as twenty-seven minutes, his right hand slid off the end and he collapsed in relief.

He wanted to stop and rest. He felt he deserved it, after that. But the blood was flowing more freely, now that there wasn't a hunk of metal to fill the wound, and he was only going to get weaker. He certainly didn't want to see what his left hand would look like after supporting all of his weight for however long it took for his body to give up on healing itself and thrust his mind back in.

So he did it again. He was slower this time.

It hurt.

He got it off.

He collapsed to the floor, heedless of anything, not so much relieved as empty.

The Master stepped in. "That was rather slow, Captain. I overestimated you."

Jack laughed hollowly, then spat blood. He looked up, blinking. "Doesn't matter," he ground out. "I won."

 

**Day 83**

Harold Saxon changed the game in five minutes flat. All it took was a glimpse of a captured Tosh on the bridge, too brief for either to cry out, to make Jack realise that what he had faced so far was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

 

**Day 88**

The Prime Minister herded all of his prisoners onto the bridge in a party hat.

"Tosh." Jack fought to her and hugged her tightly before he was pulled away.

"I thought I'd save this particular bonding experience for when I found Miss Toshiko," the Time Lord announced. "I have so hated the wait!" With a flourish he signaled some hidden engineer, and a moment later the floor beneath their feet turned transparent to reveal Japan in its entirety.

Jack was momentarily lost in the grandeur of the scene. When you were up high enough, the people and thoughts below blended into a smooth tapestry. You could, for that one moment, see the overall story of things without cutting yourself on all the little details. There was power in rooftops and aircraft.

Then he realized they were floating over Tosh's home country. He looked to her and her eyes were swelling with tears. She understood something he hadn't yet faced.

Saxon grinned back at her. "Let it burn."

A fireball exploded from their feet, barely rocking the ship, but shooting towards the land below at an impossible speed. "No!" Tosh screamed. "You can't!"

"Yes. I. _Can!_ " The Master screamed out the last word, right in her face, as loudly as he could. "I _have!"_ And the nation below exploded in a red blossom.

With an animal scream, Tosh collapsed. Guards closed in around, forming a wall around her and a second around Jack, blocking them from each other, and he realized it was because he was desperately clawing to reach her, but then the Time Lord was in his circle and in his face. "Don't think for a moment I'm sated," the man warned. "That was a little too... impersonal. Let's see what you and I can work out."

Jack stared right back, hating the cruelty, hating that in that moment his thoughts were for how he was going to endure what was to come and not how Tosh was going to cope with the destruction of her homeland. Just like the old days. He was taking care of himself, first.

 

**Day 89**

Jack twisted violently, nearly freeing a limb before they had him locked in. Leather cuffs fitted tightly around his wrists, ankles, and neck. One even lay flat against his stomach, under his shirt.

"Let's check to be sure you're strapped in properly, Captain."

An instantaneous spasm wracked his body. The stimulation continued and he lost control of his body, wriggling and writhing to get away. The straps held him fast and breathless.

Finally it ended.

Saxon gingerly examined the straps, starting at Jack's feet. He jolted and smiled as a stray spark jumped from one of the bonds to his fingertip.

Jack hung limp and gasping, struggling to breathe as phantom pains flickered at his extremities.

"Still tight," Saxon breathed as he examined the restrain at Jack's neck. "Good. Now, I think it's time we developed obedience. Call me Master."

"No."

"Hmm." A metallic cough, and his body jerked.

"Try again."

Silence.

"Well, it's your choice." The buzzing, and the pain, lasted incrementally longer this time.

"Once more."

No words, though Jack moaned slightly.

"Even dogs can figure this out, freak." Again.

At that point Jack was getting pretty grateful his current game was silence, because he wasn't going to be managing precise sounds any time soon.

 _Cough-cough_.

And again.

Saxon didn't bother to repeat the command between bursts now, just offering significant and sympathetic looks.

"Fuck," Jack groaned under his breath.

"What was that, Captain?"

"Fuck off."

"Well, if you insist." Saxon activated something and the cough began again, soon prolonging into a whine. With an overemphasized wink, he sauntered out the door. The pain was still coming.

Jack struggled to keep his mouth closed as his body bucked. He threw his head back, tendons in his neck straining, as he waited for it to end. Eventually, a real scream tore itself from him throat. He hoped it was gratifying. He hoped this humiliating pain would be enough to satisfy, because he could not survive this if he had to willingly prostrate himself before his lord and Master.

 

**Day 90**

A reminder of the previous day's experience remained in rings of discrete burns where the straps had been. The one around his neck was the worst because he couldn't seem to stop moving the skin there by turning his head. His body must have sustained additional damage after the healing process began.

The Time Lord hadn't been quick to shut the electric current off.

 

**Day 92**

Harold Saxon sent one of the guards to bear the news, a sign of his disregard. “I’m sorry, Captain,” the man whispered. “They said to tell you that he caught Owen Harper.”

 

**Day 94**

Harold Saxon stormed in, making a beeline to Jack as the guards scurried after.

“Did your toast get burnt?” Jack asked.

The Time Lord slapped him. “Don’t play stupid. It doesn’t become you. And we both know you were involved, because it is not _possible_ that your team of primitives could do it on their own.”

“They can be quite inventive.”

“You’ll be happy, I’m sure, to know that the archangel network is up and running again—”

“—thrilled—”

“—and that, if you insist that you had nothing to do with it, I’ll believe you. Your kiddies are responsible?”

“God, I hope so.”

“Perfect. I shall burn one of them. Which is the most annoying?”

“Oh, yeah, _that_ network blackout. That was all me. Just me.”

“From your cell?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t believe you.” Saxon sent one of the guards away.

 _Shit_. “What do you want?” Jack asked flatly.

“For you to pick one.”

“No. They had nothing to do with it.”

“Now, you see, that makes you a liar. And I don’t like liars.” The Time Lord waited expectantly, then sighed. “You’re no fun. Fine, I’ll pick. Dr. Harper.”

 _Owen_. “No.”

“Very articulate, Captain, but you have another Doctor now. A prettier one. Don’t you think that makes dear Dr. Harper expendable?”

“There is no comparison.” Jack had worshipped the Doctor for over a century. He had spent most of the years that he knew Owen Harper resisting the urge to shoot him. “You will not hurt Owen Harper.”

“What are you willing to offer in exchange?”

“C’mon. What do you think?”

“I want you to say it.”

Jack was afraid of fire. He closed his eyes. “Burn me instead.”

“You would die for a man who killed you?”

Jack opened his eyes. “It’s a pretty unique situation. Be a shame not to take advantage of it.”

The guard returned with a canister of petrol and a highly disgruntled Owen.

“Change of plans,” the Time Lord called over his shoulder. “You can just stick that one in the corner.”

Jack’s blood ran cold. “No, you can take that one back. We agreed.”

“…on your death. But don’t you want Mr. Harper to know what you’re doing for him? Reduce his instance of shooting you in the future.”

_No._

He was doused in petrol.

“Don’t watch, Owen.”

A match was struck.

“I’m so sorry. Please, Owen.”

He exploded into flames. Owen didn’t look away.

 

**Day 96**

"Jack!"

"Owen! Tosh!"

"Shut UP!"

They were bandied into the room, Owen with a bloodied lip and a wicked grin. Tosh's nice jacket was soiled with soot and her eyes were down, but they were glinting. She looked like a bloody genius who could sneak the technology that just might save the world into the very heart of the enemy facility.

 _I'm so glad to see you guys_. Jack smiled.

Tosh's eyes flicked up to his face as if she had heard, and gave him a smile too, then she was back down and contrite and vicious.

"Jack, what the _hell_ is this?" Owen was continuing. "Who is this bastard? Did you--"

"Shut up," the bastard growled again, then reinforced the order by gesturing a gun to Tosh's head. It worked. Jack almost laughed at the disgruntled look on Owen's face as he was forced into silence. Almost.

"Now..." Saxon paused to be sure that he had all of their attention. Jack reluctantly rotated his shoulders slightly to allow the man into his frame of vision. "Now, my man over there--" the Time Lord nodded to the guard "--is going to go stand in the corner and twiddle his thumbs for a while. However, if any of you disobey _anything_ that I say, he's going to shoot for the girl first. Got it?" Owen and Jack fixed him with identical withering glares. "Answer me. Unless you want this all to be over _very_ quickly."

Jack sighed. "Yeah," he said quickly, then turned away from Owen's surprised look. He didn't want their tech genius dead before the battle had really begun. Okay, that was bullshit, he really just couldn't watch Tosh die. "We're listening."

"When you say _we_ \--" Owen started, but the Time Lord fixed him with a glare. "Right. Fine. Shutting up now."

"Good. Now. I want you to take this." Saxon procured the familiar knife "--and kill him."

Three hearts stopped beating.

"What? _No_." Owen breathed.

Harold Saxon pulled up a chair and sat down. "Kill him," he repeated.

"No-- I-- _no_ , you sick motherfucker!"

"Last chance." He directed a pleasant smile at Tosh's forehead, then raised a delicate eyebrow at the shaking Owen.

Jack was not actually sure that Owen was going to do it, and that more than anything terrified him. His body had frozen up at the threat of pain, but he fought through it to get the important words out. "Really, Owen?" he got out through gritted teeth. "You've done it before."

Owen made really eye contact with him for the first time, and he was furious. "Not you, too! I swear, everyone on this bloody ship is insane... How-- how can-- do you _like_ it?"

"You are very quickly running out of time," Saxon observed.

Jack forced a deep breath in, and spoke as confidently as he could. "Come on, Owen. It's okay. I'm used to it. The sooner you do this, the sooner it can all be over with."

"Hmm." Owen looked closely at him, calculating something that Jack hoped wasn't a hair brained escape attempt.

"Do it." Jack urged.

"Fine." Owen gingerly took the proffered knife, stepped forward through molasses. His nose was a foot away from Jack's. Slightly lower. He raised his eyes, then the knife to chest level. Jack kept his breathing even. Owen slowly brought the knife forward, until it was almost touching Jack. "God _dam_ mit," he whispered, then drove the blade downwards.

There was a prolonged beat of agony and confused colour, then Jack collapsed away into his four minute respite.

\--

"Marvelous. You're back!"

Owen was as far away from Jack as he could be in this confined space, back pressed up against the opposite wall and eyes deliberately away. He showed no expression as Jack struggled back to his feet.

It wasn't even worth hoping that it was all over. But there was pretty close to nothing Jack wouldn't do or endure to protect two of the five people in this room. All three of the others could go to hell.

Now Tosh had the knife, of course, and he could tell by the look on her face that his captor had taken the last few minutes to outline a proposal to her similar to that presented to Owen. Her eyes were narrower, though their position was the same, and Jack worried for a frantic second that she was going to do something severely stupid. She was looking around more than absolutely necessary and, unlike with Owen, the Time Lord had given her the knife before she had made the decision to go through with the act.

That was terribly lax. Why the hell had he done that? Harold Saxon was smiling softly at him.

What was going on? There was a message here, but his brain, sluggish from the abrupt lurch from nothing, struggled to process it. If Tosh behaved offensively, she would die. That was a given. So why-- Oh. The Time Lord smiled again, wider, invitingly, purposefully not looking at Tosh.

He just wanted an excuse to kill her. That was the message here: it wouldn't take much. Jack was going to have to be quick on his feet to make it out of here with these two still alive.

 _Don't do it, Tosh,_ he willed her. _Please. It's not worth it_.

She shifted her weight slightly, a preparation for a lunge, perhaps. "No!" he accidentally shouted out loud. She looked up at him, and she understood. She trusted. She slowly relaxed her grip on the weapon. Owen was still oblivious, and Saxon looked disappointed.

"Do it, Tosh," Jack growled.

She nodded, and stepped up to him, though not quite as close as Owen had been. "Throat or heart, Jack?" she whispered softly with grieving eyes.

Jack was surprised and grateful for the choice. "Throat." She nodded, and raised the knife. "Wait! Thank you, Tosh." She nodded again, and then killed him.

\--

He kept his eyes closed, shielding his vision like a child so that he could pretend that they were gone, that this was all over.

By Captain Jack couldn't run forever.

They were all there, Owen pulled from his safety spot near the locked door and thrust back into the action.

The Time Lord clapped. "Oh, that was just beautiful! Your _faces_! To look at you, you'd think he wasn't going to come back at all!"

"I'm working on it." Jack muttered under his breath.

"Now," the man was immediately severe again, perhaps frustrated that no one else in the room found the situation funny. Jack doubted that even the Time Lord did, really. How humorous he found something did not seem to factor into his reaction to it. "It's time for some more fun. Let's see... slower, I think. That was too easy. You first." he shoved Owen forward. "If he's dead in five minutes, you'll have to try again."

Owen's face contorted tightly as he took the now-bloody weapon, and he flinched away from it in his own hand. He couldn't do it. The doctor was only able to cut people up to save them, but this...

“Owen? Do it, goddammit. It'll hurt less than watching you two die. Owen, please.”

He couldn't believe he was begging for his own death, and apparently Owen couldn't either. He was still staring aghast at the weapon in his hand, as if he couldn't fathom how it had got there. Perhaps he wished he'd never signed up for med school. A smirk quirked the corner of Jack's mouth. He sure wished that he'd never joined the Time Agency.

Or just that he'd never turned into such a sentimental idiot.

"I'm waiting, Owen..." he growled.

Owen's head snapped up like a predator’s, eyes instantly focused in to the infinitesimal moment they were all combating. "How can you expect something like this?" he whispered.

"Oh, come on." Jack faked a casual tone. "You cut me up all the time."

"Yeah, well usually I've had coffee and you're high off of your ass on morphine. These here are abominable working conditions."

"Tell me about it."

"Fuck, Jack, please don't make me do this."

The orchestrator of this angst fest permitted the conversation to continue. It must be painful enough for his interests.

Jack needed this over fast.

"Owen." He made careful and distinct eye contact. "We are going to get out of here and we are going to save the world. We always do. Okay? I just need all of you alive to do it, so your job right now is to keep your sorry ass from getting killed. I know that you can do it, Owen. I believe in you."

Owen did it.

\--

Tosh waited for him to catch his breath, then stepped forward without prodding. Tears ran freely down her face but her grip on the knife was firm. "Are you ready?" she asked. She knew he wanted to get it over with fast. She understood.

He took a deep breath. "Yeah. I'm sorry, Tosh."

"'S fine."

She brushed her fingers across his newly healed chest, carefully, a comforting touch before the pain, and then she began. Saxon had that stop watch again, and he took his sweet time in starting it. Then he did, and then they were off.

Jack tried to breath as evenly as he could for as long as he could. At the beginning it was tough not to make eye contact with Tosh, they were so close, but he made the effort for her sake. Blissfully soon his eyes weren't really focusing anyway, and by the time Saxon regretfully called the five minute mark, he was nearly gone.

"Wait--" he clawed back to the surface for a moment, pulled Owen's attention away from the opposite wall and Tosh's from her task. This last message was important. They had to know that he was okay. That he trusted them. That he would always do everything that he could to protect them. That was tough to say with no air in his lungs. "Thank you," he managed and then passed out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Day 98**

Saxon’s eyes were so big and so dark and so close. Jack stood there with the man an inch away from him, knowing better than to move away, but completely debilitated by the tension. They weren't technically touching, but all it would take was a twitch from either to be practically in each other's arms. The Time Lord was staring at Jack’s eyes. Jack tried to look back and when that failed he tried to look far away, but he could always hear the man’s breathing and it always brought him back to that horrifying little place where his stomach lurched and his skin crawled.

The Time Lord was searching for something through Jack's eyes and he was powerless to move away. It cut through him like ice.

"Sit." The man glided away and Jack gratefully inhaled. Saxon released him and guided him away, out of that dreadful room, down a corridor and into a quaint little room with a table and two chairs set for tea. He actually pulled one of them out for his guest. Methodically, Jack sat.

There was tea.

Jack’s eyes starting watering with some kind of emotion. He had given up on trying to differentiate them.

"Please, help yourself." When Jack didn’t move the Time Lord poured the tea himself. "I thought we'd have a little change of pace. Wouldn't that be nice? We don't have to be enemies, Jack."

Jack was instantly on the alert. This was bribery, clear and simple. He liked that. He understood it. He would resist it.

"Really, I just want to talk. Why are you glaring at me like that? I just want to get to know you better. But if you're really not interested, we can go back to your cell and start up where we left off yesterday..."

"No. I'll talk," Jack said a bit too hurriedly.

"Good, good..." the Time Lord pensively swirled his tea and Jack shuddered, wondering what he was going to be asked to tell. Whether it was something he could reveal without failing someone. "That team you built, they put quite a wrench in Archangel. Nothing irreparable, of course, but I was impressed. How do you choose them?"

Jack had no clue where this was going, so he just looked blankly.

Saxon’s voice hardened. "This is your last warning. If I'm not going to get a reaction out of you this way, I will resort to less pleasant methods."

 _What the hell?_ Jack supposed, though, he really should be grateful he wasn't being asked for the addresses of all of his family members. "Gut instinct," he answered honestly. "They're different. They notice what other people don't. They're persistent, occasionally to the point on insanity. But, really, I guess the most important--" he cut himself off, about to say something the Time Lord didn't need to know. He tried to cover. "The most important thing is that they look good in form-fitting black."

"No."

"You disagree?"

"That wasn't what you were going to say."

"Of course it was. You know my priorities."

"After all of the quality time we've spent together, I daresay I do. That wasn't what you were going to say. Tell me."

"Fine. Most of all, I chose them because they need Torchwood."

The Master sat back, nodding knowingly. "That's more like it. You wouldn't be one to keep work and personal life separate."

"Oh, god no. That would be so unbearably dull."

"That would kill you."

"As much as anything does."

It felt surprisingly good, to have a real conversation. Ricochet and little jabs, give-and-take. There was an art to words.

"So, Owen," Saxon prompted. "I get the others, but why him? How does he need Torchwood?"

Jack wracked his brains for a way to explain. "Owen needs... a purpose. Something he can do where he can see a direct impact on lives. But he needs distance, too... As a surgeon, the pain of watching so many die overwhelmed him. He needs someone to shield him from that."

"And that's what you do."

"Suppose."

"For all of them?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Except Ianto, I guess." _Oh, no. Abort._ The last thing Jack wanted was for the Time Lord to even _notice_ Ianto's existence and here he was separating him out from the rest of the team. _Stupid. Stupid. Stupid._

An enormous grin tore across Saxon's face. "Ianto? Really? Oh, pray tell."

"Ianto..." Jack searched desperately for something benign to say about Ianto, something that wasn't emotionally charged enough to be interesting. He settled for generalities. "He keeps to himself, mostly. If he needs protection from anything, he doesn’t really show it."

" _Interesting_. I really shall have to explore that when I meet him."

 _Fuck._ Jack tried again. "It's just--he doesn't react to things. You know?" _So he wouldn't be any fun to torment, you bastard._ "He's bland. He's really just there for the paperwork."

"That couldn't be a hint of frustration in your voice, now could it?"

"Nope. No frustration here. At least not for anything except these pointless questions."

"You couldn't _want_ him to be more interesting, now could you? Tell me about him. Now." He leaned urgently forward and Jack mirrored his posture, away.

"I don't really think it matters," he tried.

"Hmm. I do." All traces of humour vanished, he was all angles and business. "I think it matters quite a lot, and I want to understand, You will tell me, now."

Jack spluttered. Completely aside from his aversion to sharing the secrets of his personal life with his mortal enemy, he didn’t really _know_. He didn't understand Ianto, and he sure as hell didn't understand how he felt about him. Perhaps that was somewhere to start. "He's not like anyone I've ever met before. I think he might have first intrigued me just because of that. When you've lived on one planet as long as I have, that's really saying something. Even now, I don't know what he's thinking. He's so good at keeping his reactions hidden."

"Try."

"Okay, he's bothered by things, more than he lets on." Jack couldn't believe he was saying this. But he also couldn't come up with a convincing reason that these secrets were worth Tosh and Owen’s lives. It wasn't that they were dangerous, it was just that they hurt to say. "Certain things, that remind him of what happened in Torchwood One, I suppose. But he doesn't talk about it. He's the only one whose past I don't know."

"But you do talk. No, you do more than that." A look of enlightenment spread across the man's face. "It's _him_ , isn’t it?"

It wasn't worth pretending he didn't understand. "Yeah."

"Him? Really? I reckoned it was the doctor. Or maybe that gorgeous Asian. Do you trust him?"

"Wh-What?"

"Ianto Jones. Do you trust him?"

"What? No. Of course not." The conversation was too fast paced for Jack to think his answers before he spoke them.

"You don't trust him. _Fascinating_. So why do you... _Oh_." It was so exactly like the Doctor's gasp of understanding that for a moment Jack forgot where he was. " _You_ need _him_. Perfect."

Jack laughed contemptuously. Of course he didn't _need_ Ianto. He liked having him around, that was all. Not that it mattered anyway. He had nothing to lose and nothing to prove here. So why did the words pierce him like a knife to the gut?

Unwillingly, Jack thought back across the years. He saw the time in between Ianto's recruitment and the present day spread out like a map before him, and all that he wanted was too look away. This didn't belong here. This wasn't safe. This wasn't the place for it. But he couldn't look away and the Time Lord's eyes were gleaming, again, into his, farther away than before somehow so much more agonizingly intimate. Jack denied the truth of the thing even as he considered it. It hurt. This wasn't how it worked. He didn't think about these things and now he was forced to, in front of an engaged observer. Worse, _the Master knew_. He knew these little secrets that Jack himself chose not to face. They were arrayed out, for his viewing pleasure.

It was impossible to keep up a magic trick when the audience knew your secret. Jack realized with a jolt what had been done to him. Even just this little part of it was a part of him, and it belonged on the inside. It was on the outside forever now, and he would always remember it, that he was turned inside out and now nothing was safe He wracked himself for secrets, things he had to hide, but in so doing he prodded the burning areas and brought them to light in a panicked haze and his captor sat back and watched it all, satisfied and just a little bit intrigued.

 

**Day 99**

He was nothing but a shadow in the night.

 

**Day 101**

"Fear," said Harold Saxon, trailing the tip of the knife across Jack's back. "It's the thing that drives all of us at bottom. The essence of who we are."

Jack danced on his toes, trying to maneuver enough slack into his arms to turn his head, but his elbows were pressed too tightly together.

"It is the one emotion present in every known spe--" the knife plunged in even as the Time Lord finished the word. "Species." Jack, caught by surprised, arched his back and screamed.

And screamed. The knife was withdrawn with a sickening squelch that sent a fresh wave of agony through him, and it went on, as he realized in stages that he was still screaming, that there was still air, that his lung was intact and so it was going to happen again. Though he didn't even have the strength to stand on his own, he lurched forward, toes slipping on the crimson that ran down his legs, uselessly trying to escape.

All the while the man continued. "There's a simple elegance in it, I think. The simplicity. The universality." He absently wiped the knife, both sides, on the back of Jack's neck. The blood had cooled on the metal and its presence made him intimately aware of the back of his neck. His focus shifted to there and he resumed the struggle to turn his head, this time with the thought of shielding that vulnerability.

Breath tickled him there, as if the Time Lord knew. He probably did. He knew exactly what he was doing. A tremor ran through Jack's entire body because the man knew exactly how to make this as agonizing as possible. He didn't think to speak, to try to diffuse the situation through the only weapon he could find, he just drew in breath as he began to get a handle on the pain and the knife drove in again, on the other side, Saxon’s breath still hot on his neck, and the air was driven from him in a sob.

"You can't control it. You can't escape it." The Master's lips actually brushed his neck as he spoke. "Because it is, at essence, what you really are."

Jack sobbed again, loosely, losing now as a lung collapsed. The pain would never end, but he was slowly slipping away into that place where no one could hear his screams. He didn't want to go. He clawed and writhed and begged, and still the thing was impossible. The hot breath finally slipped away as the man behind him stepped back. He was going to let Jack succumb to the darkness alone.

"It's all that you could ever be." The words were loud and clear. Jack took them with him into the place beyond.

\--

He came back. He always came back. He came back trembling.

All was silence. His own panting echoed off of the walls as his heart raced. His shadow wavered on the opposite wall, but it was just him there. Or was it? Was the slightly smaller man lurking behind? He struggled yet again for the sight behind him, so that he could at least know what was coming. Yes, there was definitely movement beyond his own headless swaying. A miniscule protrusion, quickly redrawn.

At least he knew what to expect, now. He waited for it, bracing himself for the blade. He regulated his breath. He was at least going to try to hold the scream in. He was ready. He knew he was. What was going on?

But the expected pain didn't come. He must have imagined the movement behind. He must be finally alone. He sagged.

But he still didn't believe it. This was a trick. This was always a trick. He could never be alone. For hours he roiled back and forth, doubting himself at every turn, seizing up at every sound. His heart leapt into his throat intermittently. The calmer periods were marked by a sick twisting of his gut, as he meditated on what had been and what was to come. He could extract no peace from the knowledge that he was currently unhurt. He wasn't safe, he wasn't secure. This was exactly what the Time Lord had been trying to plan in his head, so he automatically resisted it, twisted away from the thoughts and wracked his brains for something that didn't emanate from this feeling that absolutely _couldn't_ be the root of all his being and that was when the pain came. Fire from above that he never understood but that sent him into convulsions even after he had healed.

He was left alone after that, for he did not know how long. Harold Saxon didn’t need to be there.

 

**Day 118**

There was something boiling down below. The human race was decimated, but the fraction that survived was fierce. They all knew it. Harold Saxon did his best to quarantine the ship, but every so often he rotated out or replaced some of the guards, and the fresh faces shared rebellious whispers and hope.

Jack liked to imagine he was down there, fighting the fight in a whirl of precariously handled weaponry and hopeless plans and skirted bureaucratic meltdowns. This was the ultimate alien threat and it just wasn't right that Torchwood couldn't be at the center of the resistance. Captain Jack Harkness needed to be on the surface.

As it happened, so did Harold Saxon.

The excursion was supposed to last three days, the guards said as they let Jack down. The Time Lord had decided that some face to face intimidation was necessary, and so he was leaving the Valiant--and all its prisoners--in the care of the Toclafane for 72 hours.

"Can we break into the bridge?" Jack asked.

"No chance. It's locked and guarded by dozens of Toclafane. He's made sure we can't take this opportunity to do anything useful."

"So what can we do?"

The head guard's eyes crinkled with his smile. " _You_ can spend some quality time with your friends. Would you like a shower first?"

"Oh, god, yes."

He got the shower, and clean clothes, and an actually human-sized portion of that mashed stuff there was to eat.

Then he saw them.

"Hello, kiddies. Miss me?"

Tosh and Owen bowled him over, laughing and swearing and threatening to kill him. The guards backed slowly out of the furnished room they had been shown into, leaving the three finally alone.

"I'm going to fucking kill you," Owen laughed.

"Again?"

"Not funny."

"Are you okay, Jack?" Tosh asked quietly.

"Of course I'm okay. I'm always okay."

"How long have you been here?"

"Since the Toclafane arrived, I guess."

Tosh's face fell and Owen's eyes darkened. "You bastard," he spit. "What were you doing for two months before that? Do you have any idea how long we spent searching for you?"

Jack felt like the wind had been sucker punched out of him. "I... didn't think you'd look," he whispered, defeated.

"How daft are you?"

"Pretty damn daft, I guess. The time shift didn't even occur to me. There's no way I can prove this to you, but for me it was only two days, I swear. The Master took over fourty eight hours after I left you."

"Where were you?" asked Tosh.

"The end of the world."

That pretty much ended that strain of conversation.

"We all went into hiding," Tosh explained. "We could communicate but we didn't know where the others were, so if one of us went down... anyway, Ianto is still out there. And Gwen and Rhys."

"And Martha," Jack mused.

"What?"

"Martha. Jones. I met her, well, fourty eight hours before the world went to hell. She was on board when it happened, but she escaped--" he waved his bare wrist to display the lack of teleportation device "--and she's working out a way to stop it."

"Your Martha, whoever she is, is long dead, mate."

"You don't know her."

"And you do?"

"Fine." Jack sat back. "All can tell you we're all fucked, if you'd rather hear that."

Tosh spoke up. "Stop it, the pair of you. We don't have time for this. Jack, for once, can you just explain what's going on?"

"...Yeah." He owed it to them. It was his fault they were here. "You've heard me talk about the Doctor, about trying to find him. I've been searching for a very long time. Nothing. Then suddenly he was there and I didn't think, didn't stop to consider whether he was still my top priority, I just ran with him. All the way to the edge of the universe, then back again, and before I knew it I was on the bridge of this ship trying to stop an alien invasion. I tried to contact you as soon as I got back into this century, but I guess by then you’d gone to the Himalayas. I've been here ever since."

"Yes, but _what_ is the Doctor?"

Jack realised that they would only know the Doctor as that shriveled thing. It caused him undue grief. "An alien. Time Lord... humanoid but immortal. Ish. But where he’s bad, grief and hate, the Doctor is... _good_. Like he'd jump in front of a bullet for you even if you were his worst enemy."

"And he left you behind." The rest didn't need to be said.

"Yeah. He did."

Once again there was no follow-up. So Jack trudged over to the couch and laid down on it, wincing and moving gingerly where the motion twinged atrophied or overtaxed muscles.

Owen was hovering at his side instantly.

Though the doctor didn't say anything, his intent was clear. Jack had to smile. Then he had to cry. Then he grabbed Owen, and Tosh too, and manhandled them into a bear hug. And found himself apologizing over and over for pulling them into this, for leaving them, for recruiting them into Torchwood in the first place. And they kept telling him that it was okay, that they were okay, but they weren't, they were beaten up and half-starved and screwed up enough to actually miss Torchwood and it was all because of him.

Owen forcibly extricated himself. "I'm only saying this once. I don't blame you for this. I know you're trying to protect us, and much worse off than we are. And even when you're a douche bag, you're usually right in the end. So thank you, Jack, and don't try to kill yourself with self-loathing, because you don't deserve it. Now get off me."

"Love you too, Owen."

Jack would have guessed that his top priority upon being freed would be sleep, but he somehow he couldn't bring himself to close his eyes. The group was broken and missing a few vital parts, but it was the closest to the times that he was slowly realizing had been happy for him. He and Tosh and Owen stayed up late into the night talking about anything and everything, finally falling asleep in an exhausted heap. It was odd, considering how far he was into enemy territory, but Jack felt completely secure.

 

**Day 119**

"Captain, the Master is returning ahead of schedule. I apologize, but we need to hurry." Jack clawed to consciousness, and considered the guard hovering in the doorway through bleary eyes. He pulled an arm out to wipe them and Owen's head, suddenly devoid of support, cracked against the floor.

"Oi! What the hell?"

"Sorry. I'm really sorry. But they say we've got to go back now."

"Shit. Tosh? Time to go, darling."

It was agonizing to walk away from them, pointedly avoiding goodbyes or a last glance. He knew full well that that could be the last time he saw either of them. It was almost equally painful to return to his stinking cell and allow his hands to be chained back above his head, forcing him to stand. Then to be left alone, again, so that should Harold Saxon choose to check, everything would seem to be as he left it.

He did choose to check.

"I'm sorry for leaving, Jacky-boy. I hurried back just for you. Miss me?"

"Terribly."

Jack closed his eyes.

 

**Day 126**

Tosh died first. Jack didn’t know how. The Time Lord burned him with the body.

 

**Day 133**

Saxon brought Jack to the bridge to witness an execution that was, refreshingly, not his own. A "traitor" was to be executed for attempting to undermine Archangel, but it was not Martha and it was not one of his team.

An actual guillotine was rigged up in the center of the room. One corner of Jack's mouth twitched at the memory of how some of his more _liberal_ views had been received during the French Revolution. He'd had a job, back when he was a mortal Time Agent, that had fleetingly involved France during the Reign of Terror. That had been tricky.

There was a touch of nostalgia there. Jack had cut his teeth on raging empires. Everything since seemed tame in comparison.

_Thunk._

And he was done. As long as he didn't look at the still-bleeding head, he could march out with head high and fingers crossed. It wasn't him and it wasn't Owen, and that was all he could afford to hope for.

**Day 145**

Jack woke up--from being literally crushed to death--with a headache. A small, ironic headache.

Also, claustrophobic.

How did that work, he wondered idly, as he shuddered at the walls that his eyes kept convincing him were creeping forward. His body didn't decay or retain injury. His mind didn't age, at least not in the traditional sense that involved the death of nerve cells and erosion of cognitive functioning. So how could experiences impact him that viscerally, brand him with a horror of loud noises or heated metal? For that matter, how did he remember dying, down to the last moments, when nothing was really working right inside him at all?

He needed to get out of here soon, or he was going to end up a philosopher. Owen would never let him live that down.

**Day 152**

Owen wasn’t there any more.

 

**Day 154**

_Come on, my star is fading_

_And I swerve out of control_

_If I, if I'd only waited_

_I'd not be stuck here in this hole_

_And I see no chance of release_

_And I know I'm dead on the surface_

_But I am screaming underneath_

_No it's no cause for concern_

_Stuck on the end of this ball and chain_

_And I'm on my way back down again_

_Stood on the edge_

_Tied to the noose_

_Sick to the stomach_

_You can say what you mean_

_But it won't change a thing_

_I'm sick of the secrets_

_Stood on the edge, tied to the noose_

_And you came along and you cut me loose_

 

**Day 162**

Then the Time Lord caught Ianto Jones.


	6. Chapter 6

>  

**Day 171**

"Two down, one more to go. How long do you reckon your gorgeous little Ianto can last, Captain?"

The wickedness choked the room. Jack was so very tired, but it was only going to get worse. And the worse he was, the harder he had to fight.

Fight to lose control. So _now_.

"Freak." The word barely escaped.

"What was that?" The Time Lord threw his arms wide, yelling for the world to hear.

"I’m not a Captain. I'm a freak."

"You're right." He spun and clapped. "Come with me, freak. Let's show your little friend what you really are."

No." Jack fell back, tangled in the chains. No, this had been to protect Ianto, but how could he not be hurt when he saw his Captain like this, willing to beg or give anything? How could he keep his faith in him?

"And here we go again. It's always about you, isn't it? Your pain, your joy, your pride." Saxon slid his tongue over his teeth. "And now you see exactly where we stand. You can endure the pain, subject yourself to months of my tender ministrations, for him. For any of your team. You will burn to see the one who betrayed you live another day." Jack clenched his teeth at the memory.

‘But your pride? Oh, no. Not that. Anything but that. You see, we are alike in that respect. We both choose ourselves over them."

"No." Jack pushed himself away from the wall, away from the support. _No._

"Ah, freak. So it begins. You will voluntarily put yourself in front of them, even remembering the last time you were there.” Almost to himself: "interesting..."

Jack stood, defeated, waiting.

"Don't worry. I'll make it an easy one, today. Put these on." And he threw a wad of black fabric at Jack, simultaneously releasing the supporting chains. “I'll give you some privacy," he snickered, "and then we'll be on out way."

Each movement as Jack donned the clothes hurt. Not physically, but there was a resistance that he had to push through. The whole thing felt _wrong_. Against his very nature. If he wasn't a defiant little shithead, then who was he?

There was not a whisper of breath on the bridge of the ship as the arrayed masses watched Jack trudge on. They knew what would come next. None of them wanted to see it. There was one face wouldn’t look at, which proved difficult because Ianto was fervently trying to catch his eyes.

Jack knew he would find strength there, but he denied himself. Cowards didn't deserve companionship.

All was silent. All was ready.

"Well, Hello!" The Time Lord’s voice singsonged out across the faces. "I'll get to the point. I'm sure you've all pressing things to do." Jack recognized the Jones family, the Captain of the guard, the aged and crippled Doctor, all staring at him with various levels of masked sympathy. _I'm unchained_. He thought at them. _Can't you tell? Can't you see I'm giving in?_ Still he did not look at Ianto.

"I have a very important announcement to make. You have all witnessed my little games with the Captain. He and I have finally reached an understanding. Kneel, Jack."

Jack knelt.

"Lower."

He bowed his head.

"Lower."

Jack collapsed until he was lying completely prostrate, nose on the floor.

"Good." The Time Lord placed his booted foot, not too gently, on the back of Jack's neck, and kept it there. Jack gasped slightly, struggling to breathe under the pressure without Saxon noticing his struggles.

"He has given in. He has chosen to escape the pain. Now, freak, call me Master so they all can hear." He kicked Jack over onto his back and he lay there, the wind knocked out of him.

"Say it. Now!" The man kicked him again, harder

"Master." He was having trouble with breathing, so his volume wasn't great.

"What was that?"

His head flopped to the side and he saw him. He saw Ianto. They locked eyes. The other man was crying, whether with betrayal or shame Jack didn't know. He remembered who he was doing this for, and why he could never know.

“Master." It rang out, loud and clear.

"That will do, for now." He nodded to one of the guards. "Get him out of here.”

Jack didn't let Ianto see him limp.

 

**Day 172**

Jack tried to focus on each breath, hissing in and out, but it was in vain. Nothing could keep him away from thoughts of the previous day. Of submitting. Captain Jack Harkness couldn't even follow a simple order. So who the hell did yesterday’s show make him?

Jack was relieved, in a way, when the Master slouched in. Death itself was less humiliating than giving in under the threat of pain. It was a dance he knew.

"I had such fun yesterday," the Master pouted. "I wish we could do it again today, but it just wouldn't have the same impact, I think. We've got to give the audience some time to start naively adoring you, again."

"It's inevitable."

"We'll just have to keep proving them wrong, won't we?"

"If you're so sure they're wrong, then what's your fascination?"

The Master laughed. "Fascination? With you? You can't honestly think--" Jack remained stoically silent as the Master made a show of dissolving into giggles. "You do," he realized abruptly. "You think this is about _you_. Well, I've got a story for you, Jacky-boy! Once upon a time there was a little Time Lord boy who looked into the untempered schism and was _chosen_. There was a message, implanted in his head by _Time itself_. Do you know what that made him? Above the Time Lords. Above every single sentient species, because he alone was altered by Time. He alone survived the great Time War, the two almightiest civilisations collapsing around him. Do you notice something about this story?"

"At least six major plotholes--"

" _You aren't in it!_ Now, where were we?"

"You were going to ask me out for scones and texting," Jack suggested helpfully.

"Oh, yes. Obedience. Fun. Here's the plan." He was back to his charming old self in an instant. "I'm going to let you down. Same old stakes. You lay a finger on me, or don't follow my orders to the letter, and next time you die it'll be with... which one are we down to, again? Oh, yes. Ianto Jones. Are you ready?"

"You bet."

"Fabulous. Now, you just stand there. Arms stay at your sides, if you please." He released Jack and watched as he assumed the described position. As soon as he was steady, the Master backhanded him across the face.

Jack stumbled slightly, but regained his balance and returned to the prescribed position. He managed to keep his arms at his sides. As soon as he was there the Master struck again, in exactly the same place. Jack managed the same feat, though let a few choice swear words slide out under his breath as he recovered from the blow. The Master's ring had struck near his left eye. It began to water. He braced himself for the next assault on his face, leaving him completely unprepared for the man to sock him in the stomach. Jack bent over, gasping for air even as he struggled to keep his elbows at his sides, and before he even had a chance to recuperate the Master struck him on the spine and he went down.

He sprawled on the ground and froze, waiting for further orders.

"I didn't say you could lie down, freak."

Only then did Jack struggle back up, placing palms on the floor to lever himself up. Before he got more than an inch off the ground the Master kicked him so hard that he flipped over.

"I told you to keep your hands at your sides, freak." Jack flushed, embarrassed to have failed the simple direction. Then even more embarrassed as he struggled to his feet clumsily without the use of his hands. No sooner was he up than the Master struck him again, putting his full body into the swing across his jaw, and he was down again. Something snapped. He unconsciously lifted a hand to probe the injury. The Master swiftly kicked him in the stomach. "Hands at your sides!" Jack dropped them immediately and lay there, showing that he was following orders exactly, but still the man kicked him again, and again. Something else cracked in his chest and his breathing was suddenly agony. "Fuck," he moaned.

"Why are you lying down? Get up." He did.

This time, when Jack fell, he waited only a moment before working to his feet. He'd been managing it before by utilising the moment of sitting up to rock himself all the way to a standing position, but with his chest injured he could no longer do so. He rolled over on to his side and hastily propped himself up with an elbow, grunting at the pain but wary of another kick.

 He was up, then down, then up again, and the Master was grinning. "So, we have obedience. You really are a quick study." Jack was momentarily pleased, then horrified at his own twisted emotions. Nothing made sense anymore. "You've earned a quick death," the Master continued. "You may finish it." And he proffered the same curved weapon he wielded.

It occurred loosely to Jack to use the weapon against his captor, but it was only an echo of a thought. He slit his own throat without a moment's hesitation.

 

**Day 176**

Some days he told himself it could be worse. He had quite the convincing argument: He could be left here, in this humid shithole, alone, for eternity. Until he collapsed from exhaustion. He would be mad long before then, yet not soon enough.

Wasn't it attention that he had always craved? He had learned how to get it and, in a perverted sense, he still was getting it.

He found himself thinking of the people left on earth, wasting away in poisoned factories or starving in barren cities. Alone, neighbour turned against neighbour for a chance to escape the slaughter. What were they dying for? None of them had chosen this life, this fight. None of them even knew that there were people in this world that could rival Harold Saxon in power.

For Jack it was different. Everything that was done to him, he could give meaning. He had chosen it and was known to have sacrificed for it. He could be a martyr instead of a statistic.

He might have said that he didn't want to be either. But he knew better.

Whatever was happening, Captain Jack Harkness had to be at the centre of it. No matter who he had to move out of his way, or drag into danger with him, he would do it.

Some hero.

 

**Day 181**

Jack sure wasn't doing this with grace.

Well, what the hell could the Doctor expect? If their positions were reversed, the Time Lord could probably utilize some old Gallifreyan trick to get the lot of them free, safe, and on the TARDIS light years away in a snap of the fingers. The man always had a way out.

He had a way about him, that inimitable man. It's wasn't that he always chose the high road, it was that the only option he saw open to him at any given point. It was like his no-guns policy: he always took them away without a second thoughts as to whether they might actually be needed and then, magically, it worked out.

Jack wondered how many of the Doctor's adventures were miracles just because he flew away before things could go back to being shit.

Still, the Time Agent had never stood a chance. He could never shine beside that blazing star, not for Rose or anyone else. His utilitarian morals and gritty methods could never compare. With so many bright lights to cast him into shadow, how was it that he was ever found?

 

**Day 187**

They caught Gwen. Jack was on fire.

 

**Day 195**

Blindfolded on the bridge, he was convinced everyone was looking at him.

They weren't. They didn't know him; they were exhausted and they didn't care. That was probably the point of this exercise: to show him that nobody really cared about him at this point. "You don't matter."

Yet somehow that was not what Jack was getting out of it. He had sat there for several minutes watching, before he had been ordered blindfolded by a peeved Time Lord who, like all the great bosses of the world, expected his lackeys to read the orders from his mind. Glances had slid off of him. Somehow, in this place, no one was curious anymore, no one was horrified, or remembered how to show it, and he was just another poor soul each of those who walked past him endeavored not to see.

The Doctor was not there.

Yet his skin burned and he wasn't breathing, really. He inhaled shallowly and held each breath for as long as he could before relinquishing it. He knew this was contributing to the tension threatening to overwhelm him so he tried to take a deep breath, he honestly did. He got halfway there, but at mid expansion it already _hurt_ so much. It was such a confusing pain; it wasn't sharp or throbbing or familiar in any way. It wasn't even entirely describable as pain. All he could say was that it _hurt_. It was powerful. He wasn't used to stopping things just because they caused him pain, but here he couldn't continue.

And he knew they were all looking at him. They were watching him flounder and sink under something that he was making up himself. He didn't need an enemy to fight; he could take himself down in a moment. They must be able to see it in every twitch in his face. He held agonizingly still. He didn't twitch a muscle for hours. Then, afraid that he might look too afraid, tried and found that it _hurt_ now. Twitching his right index finger from side to side. He felt his entire essence focused in on that one movement. He breathed with it; his heart beat with it.

The room must be crowded and every person there was staring at it. Each movement rose in discomfort but he kept going, convinced that there must be some threshold over which he could break that would make this all revert, that would allow him full use of his body again, to show instead of be seen. But nothing, it just kept mounting, and each movement was a separate and new struggle until eventually he stopped. He realized that, in the absence of his thought, his breathing had slowed even more. His throat was thick and dry because he hadn't swallowed. He did so now, and the sound was so deafening. It roared above the sensation in his ears, the sensation that was only like a sound in the way that the hurt was like a pain.

It wasn't. Was it?

He was still again, entirely, except for the pulse in his right wrist. A major blood vessel there was pressed up against the arm of the chair, and slowly fallen deepened and deeper until there must be an angular dent in him. His blood pumped hard in that spot, feebly hoping to keep his hand alive while the rest of him faded away. All of his energy was focused there, he was so self-conscious of it, and it was perhaps all the worse for the fact that he couldn't _see_ the pulse, see how much damage was really being done by a few feeble pumps of the heart.

 

**Day 200**

Jack was cold. Freezing in the sweltering room and one part of his brain said _ribber_. But another said _star_ and still another proclaimed _infection_ so he decided that the words didn’t matter anyway.

More people came to visit him through the rust.

Ianto made coffee and Owen and Tosh finally noticed each other and the two Doctors squabbled over the TARDIS brakes and Gwen had a gun to her.

They laughed and he laughed and then cried and they shot him.

 

**Day 202**

When Jack turned ten, his father took him deep into the desert.

"You're a man now, son. Are you scared?"

Young Jack, half-expecting to be asked to fight a dragon, mutely nodded.

"That's okay. It's okay to be scared. But now you've got to be brave, too. You've got to protect people. Take care of your brother. Don't let anyone hurt the people you decide are your family. You got that?"

Jack nodded again.

It was two years later that the demons came.

 

**Day 217**

_Those who are dead are not dead_

_They're just living in your head_

_And since you fell for that spell_

_You are living there as well_

_You thought you might be a ghost_

_You didn't get to heaven but you made it close_

**Day 231**

Jack had lost two weeks. Or so the Master informed him.

"Fourteen Days, Captain. You spent it bawling like a baby."

Jack did not lament the lost time. There was someone named Ianto out there still, or he would know. Harold Saxon would not affect any serious damage to the man without an agonized spectator.

"Where are you, Captain?"

Though, if the man in his dreams was not real, Jack did not understand who Ianto really was.

"If you won’t come to me, Captain, I'll bring him, I will, and you'll see..."

Jack did not understand the words. Someone was hurting nearby, so close, nearly beside him. They were confused and lost, so lost, and their voice cut into him like a razor to his cheek.

Nothing could hold him. He filled the space with his breath, feeling the life roll under his skin. Something felt right for the first time in a long time and he could no longer remember the last invisible barrier between him and the rest of the world. Now the distance was his own to take.

"Where are you, Captain..."

**Day 233**

Nobody had ever really cared whether Jack died or not. All that really mattered to them was that he woke up again. One gasp of air and their tears dripped forgotten--only he seemed to remember the grief.

Funny how immortality made you expendable.

Jack lay on his back, sobbing weakly as he choked on his own blood, the blood that flowed hot and apocalyptic over his useless lungs. His fingers uselessly grasped the edges of his torn skin, as if he hand could hold together his rent chest, as if pressure from his palm could staunch the flowing lifeblood.

An agonizing and hopeless battle, and he was only prolonging it.

He knew that he was alone and always would be; he knew that everyone who would even think to come for him had long since given up or died--but still he hoped. He hoped and dreamed to the ceiling where his beleaguered eyes invented shapes, coalescing into an image, forming a face.

_Owen._

Jack smiled weakly, grateful that for once his subconscious was conjuring up helpful images. This doctor would guide him to his sleep.

Owen Harper smiled benevolently as he guided Jack's weak hands away from his injury.

No. His survival instinct absurdly intact after all these years, would not permit him to succumb to death that easily. Wrenching away with and unexpected show of force, he applied his hands back to their losing battle.

"Jack." Owen smiled softly and tore Jack's hands away again. "Let it happen. We need you healthy."

Jack was too exhausted to fight anymore. He allowed the Doctor to pin his hands on either side of his body, preventing him from trying to save his own futile life.

 _Do not go gentle into that good night_.

The Captain was dead by the time his eyes closed.

 

**Day 234**

Jack writhed. He needed to crush, to destroy and to impact, himself or another, it didn't matter. Details were irrelevant, experiences were irrelevant, he just needed to _be_. It was a bitter and overwhelming moment that projected out to infinity.

It wasn't new.

He laughed abruptly. It was more of a scream.

It had been there all along, inside of him, and even now that it was voiced it was still there, latent, devouring. When had it begun? When he'd abandoned his team? When he'd found them? When he'd discovered himself stuck on the little backwards planet that didn't want him at all, much less 3,000 years early? Perhaps when he'd discovered the Doctor and realized there was something more.

But it was before then. An itch that his parents had laughingly called hyperactivity. It had driven him off the planet, into the stars. He'd traveled them for years, believing he was saved and denying the burn that threatened to consume him.

Because it had never been enough. It never could be.

This was who he was, and it was going to hurt. It was like that instant of failure, of flushing face and hitched breathing, magnified by an eternity of audiences, frozen and concentrated into that little cell at the back of his mind. Running wouldn't save him, so why bother? Staying here, pinioned and limp, was equivalent.

More screaming laughter.

It made sense now. He had always been searching for that something _more_ that meaning that had to lurk behind the next galaxy or pair of pretty blue eyes. He thought it was in front of him, but it wasn't. It was part of him. And it was just a trick. A gimmick. A technical mistake that drove him over every metaphorical cliff of the universe. Just the same as him immortality.

A self destruct sequence that had been permanently frozen.

 

**Day 248**

Jack had been moved to the bridge to "mix it up." Bent backwards over a chair in the corner, hands shackled to feet, back unnaturally arched. Then they left.

The Master ignored him, and no one else would catch his eye. He panted through gritted teeth, waiting for whatever show was planned, but none came. He was just there. Part of the scenery. He half-expected to be sat on.

He struggled to breathe through the strain, worked to focus his eyes and make sense of the images that came to him upside-down and distorted from the pain. Something was coming. The Master was there, moving quickly, spasmodically... dancing? Or having a seizure. No, dancing, leaning on something squat and square, heavy enough to bear his weight, handles... a wheelchair. The Doctor. The Master was talking to the Doctor.

His back felt like it was already broken. It was getting harder to breathe. He couldn't focus any longer and drifted, images shattering in purple and orange before his flushed face. He didn't know how long he was there, the images just kept coming. They were all real, he was sure, but with some of them the colours were just wrong. No, they couldn't be more than his imagination, but then why were they talking to him?

"Jack. Wake up, Jack?"

"What is the fucking point of you?"

"Careful, that's harrassment, sir."

"I told you it was stupid telling him he was dead."

"You're the biggest monster of them all."

"Who are you talking to, Jacky-boy?

"Leave him alone, Master. It's me you want."

None of it was real. He was dead already. He was on fire.

\---

He didn't know when they took him down. It was silent, silent enough that his choked scream as he fell to the ground eclipsed the room. They helped him up, or tried to. Something was wrong. He was broken. No matter how much pain his mind was willing to endure, his body could no longer stand straight.

He had to stand straight. That was his job; that was what he was going back to in his cell. He needed to be able to. So they killed him, a bullet to the brain. He let them. It was his sacrifice.

"We need you healthy, Captain."

 

**Day 252**

Life was a rote process whose objective he could no longer understand. He wondered why he bothered. He knew that if it was just him he wouldn’t have.

But he made a decision to trust. His purpose was to protect certain people. It would seem that he had failed in that, but perhaps there was more to it because he had protected them not just because it was his purpose. Perhaps he could trust them.

And whether Ianto was dead or alive, he wanted Jack to live. He always said so.

That way was harder, because it allowed long-forgotten niggling of fear in again. But because this life was so unnatural, so vacant and perhaps fictitious, he determined he could fabricate his own rules and one was that the burn was good. What was life for if not to feel?

The man who called himself the Master was there, had been all along, and he was crying as he worked. There was none of the joy and fervor left and Jack wondered if he was a ghost.

Could be. The Bad Wolf hadn’t bargained on this, had she?

Blaid drwg. Centuries. A millennium or a day. He was receding now, or perhaps ascending. Was this what it was to live?

“Good night.”

 

**Day 260**

Collapsing into a chair, he breathed a sigh of relief and considered opening his eyes.

He decided it wasn't worth it.

His head flopped limply to the side as he swam far, far away, spinning faster and faster as gravity dissolved and time ceased to matter. The sharp metal under his fingers became soft and then air, until he fell though it, a sensation he had once feared--he dreaded the uncertainty of that lurch, the quesetion of what was beneath him. Too often nothing. And then he was falling. Nobody blamed him for it. It was what he was made for, to fall. Why else had he been sent so high?

With the flick of a switch icy light attacked his senses and he realized that his eyes had never really been closed at all. The artificial night was artificially lifted but, for the time being, he was too blind to see a thing. His eyes burned and watered. He couldn't quite concentrate enough to close them. He'd grown accustomed to the dark. He had lived his whole life there, and he wanted to go back. A pressure on his chin warned him his chin had been struck sideways, into his shoulder, but that sensation was irrelevant because this place wasn't real.

More pressure went across his wrists and ankles.

The voice was higher.

There were too many of them.

Something was wrong.

"Wha--" he blinked and slight shapes began to differentiate. One loomed, the bright one, and he relaxed back into the chair because this was what he knew. His body knew what to expect after seeing that face. The questions were gone.

"Don't try to speak to them, Jack. They won't answer." Before he could worry over this new ambiguous statement, the pain began.

He drifted into it. It enveloped him.

Falling.

There was, perhaps, only one thing that could rouse him from that state and it was the low moan that sounded inches from his face, so close that it frightened him because he could not remember the last time that anyone, even the Bright One, had been that close. Dark eyes above it, uncharacteristically naked, and thick dark hair above that, torn and ragged. A swipe of brilliant scarlet above the eyebrow, and _Gwen Cooper_.

And electric shock went through his body as he jerked, wrenching against the straps that held him to the chair, and an involuntary hiss escaped his gritted teeth. Seeing the face that he had fantasized about for so long right in front of him, that close, without warning, was too much.

"They won't speak to you, Captain." came the voice again from behind him, and now it made sense. There were two others there, with wider eyes and darker skin than Gwen Cooper who was _right in front of him_ , and each had a knife that was bloody. They stepped forward in turns, and used it, shallowly, eyes flicking up to something behind him and pleading.

Except for that one beat, when he had focused, none of them would look anywhere near his face. He scrambled to remember the Something Important that he needed to say to or do for this Gwen Cooper, and for the others as well, but it didn't come and they weren't looking at him. Maybe they didn't want it. It must not matter. When their eyes were up and behind him the knife bit deeper; when they looked down and away it barely grazed him. Lips parted but were silenced by a soothing "shh" from behind him.

He tried to close his eyes and fall again, but he found that he couldn't. Something had twisted until it broke, and he had questions again.

Gwen Cooper contacted him again with her eyes, and this second impact was nearly as great as the first. It brought with it a flash of memory. Screams and failure.

"What is the fucking point of you?"

_What is the fucking point of you?_

Gwen was hurting him like he had hurt her. He remembered Rhys's death now, and he could see the parallels to what he was now experiencing. The old law dictated an eye for an eye, and Time Lords were the oldest. But how did he know? Gwen knew. When her lips tightened, and her movements became clinically precise, it meant that she was being just and enacting just deserts. The world was nothing if not fair. They all got what they gave in the end. The man behind him was broken and he was lost and Gwen was getting revenge for what needed to be avenged.

The hardness in her eyes was personal and destructive. He accepted it.

The next to his face was Francine, and tears of anger glistened in her eyes. He accepted them, and what they wanted to communicate to him. He had failed to protect Martha, and Tish, and Francine, and Torchwood, and the entire planet, when he had sworn he would. He had broken his word, and she was the one suffering. Justice would always be balanced. Time needed to reassert itself. The Captain and the Master were the tools of justice.

The next was Tish, and she was empty.

That was the perfect torture. She didn't really see him. She voided his existence, as should have been done a century ago when he had died a young and stupid and valiant death.

As the youngest of the three, she reminded him of Rose before she had touched the enormity that no human was meant to: eternity, completing the poetic justice of the scene. He trusted the logic, embraced it as his world made sense once again, but then they rotated again and again it was Gwen in front of him and she would _not_ let him go.

He tried to tell her that he understood, that her anger was right and he would take it, but it did not occur to him to speak and she didn't seem open to listening. She woke him up, again, and opened him farther than he liked. There were more questions than answers in reading her face, how it changed when she looked from him to the something behind him, and he drew in a breath to do he knew not what, but then the soothing voice of reason flew from behind him:

"Don't speak. They won't listen."

Tish was back, and he saw that it was true.

He gave her the light behind his eyes so that he could fade away.

 

**Day 262**

The Master's plaything was absent that day.

 

**Day 272**

Jack couldn’t do this any longer.

It wasn’t about the pain. Not, anymore, was it about the Doctor, the Master, or even his team. Lust, hate and love had lost power.

There was nothing left but this overwhelming sickness that chafing away the skin on his wrists against the cuffs couldn’t destroy.

It certainly wasn’t about him. How could it be? He was nothing.

 

**Day 273**

Marched though the ship, Jack found himself on the wrong side of a mirror.

 

**Day 275**

Panicking again. Fuck.

He did not want to be here. He did not want to do this. He did not want this to turn into a habit.

It had been. Through the days of his youth, suppressed through force of will once he joined the time agency and realized what this new career path was going to require, resurgent as he began to realize the full implications of his curse. There had been years, soon after he joined Torchwood, where he had been overwhelmed. Utterly useless.

For some reason, there was something in his head that he couldn't quite triumph over. A balance of chemicals and thoughts that were still uncured in the 51st century.

It was coming back.

There was nothing he could do.

Waves of tension wracked his body, not the flinch from pain but the uncontrollable loss of his muscles. His fingers clawed and in that moment he would not have been able to move even if he had been unchained and there were a wall of fire behind him. Breathing wasn't happening. It would, though, before he passed out. He had tried that plenty of times, in an attempt to turn the thing off: holding his breath. But in the same way he couldn't inhale now, soon he wouldn't be able to stop himself. His body would take control to when it was wanted, but when it was needed.

Until then, he was stuck in pain and shame.

He clawed his right hand inward, trying to break the cycle through controlled stimulus. One of his nails was torn and he tried to use that to tear the skin of the pad of his thumb. He used to be so good at this. It could strike anywhere, as deep into the enemy territory as he could dread, and within moments he would be back under control.

What had he lost?

Breath was beginning now, shallowly, too soon, it would be prolonged. Utterly alone, every inch of exposed skin nevertheless burned. Even as he struggled to control it, more and more of him was brought into agonizing focus.

If only it could be a secret.

What? All of it. Any of it. Him.

It was the knowledge, he realized, that so many people knew that was preventing him from coping. He had lost the anonymity. In the years of the time agency, and afterward, there had not been a single living soul who had known him. Now there were too many.

Starting with the doctor - it always came back to him - who had exposed some stupidity or some hope. Something uncontrollable. Gwen. Ianto. People he trusted and told things that he had long ago resolved to keep secret. When the knowledge became too complex for him to work out, to categorize into who he was and needed to be, then it became dangerous. He'd hidden from them all those years the knowledge that he didn't really understand himself. They weren't secrets. They were mysteries. He didn't know.

There wasn't a resolution to this scene, just as there had never been a resolution to this story. Just a place to rest, temporarily, then journey on. It was absurd how he kept tumbling forth to rush through life, because it would never end and he would never live. Or, if it did, he would never know what it was like to have cared.

 

**Day 291**

There were three cracks on the wall in front of him. As long as there were three, he would count them and they would be real.

That night there were four, but he did not see them.

Gwen was there, and she did not like the weather.

“It’s too hot here.”

He laughed. “Welsh. Drowning in the air isn’t enough.”

“Rhys said I should come.” Suddenly she was in a wedding dress. “One last time. To say goodbye.”

“You can’t go!”

“I can. I’ve made my choice.”

“No.” He was sure that she would be in terrible danger if she left, danger she had no idea about. He had to warn her. “It’s not safe! Please don’t.”

She smiled back at him sadly. “It’s done.”

It was.

 

**Day 299**

"Ianto Jones."

Jack Harkness had spent the night in anxious anticipation that he had expected to mount at this critical point. He had not expected his eyes to fill with tears and the chaos behind his eyes to quiet for just one moment, to feel so safe, of all things. It was easier to think of this as a fight, seeing Ianto there with the same defiance in his eyes. It was easier to reach for victory, when he could see it standing right there in front of him.

"Ianto?"

Then he saw that the younger man was gagged. Of course. God forbid they comfort each other.

What the Master didn't know was that Ianto really wasn't all that talkative anyway. The two didn't need words to exchange strength.

It was those that lacked it who sought to fill the air with sound.

"...caught... team... idiot... tough... weak..." Ianto rolled his eyes as the Master drolled on. Jack grinned.

"...so I think I might just kill him, right off the bat." That got Jack's attention. He kept his expression neutral, knowing that any provocation could make the Master follow through. The man might, any way. Ianto was very still. The Master reveled in their attention. "I suppose I can always decide that later..." He gestured the guards away, after ensuring Ianto was restrained by cuffs.

He stepped forward, deliberately, and now it was Ianto that he was face to face with, hovering within the zone of comfort, speculative. It was the only chance that Jack was going to get.

"Hey, dickwad!" he called.

"Is that how you address me?" the Master asked without looking away.

"Sometimes. Sometimes it's needleprick motherfucker. Sometimes it's just plain old coward." Jack could see in the tension of the Time Lord's shoulders that he was having an impact.

"I think you will find that that is not the appropriate term of address." Ianto giggled, somewhere in his throat, and the Master latched on it. He gripped Ianto around the neck, and raised him until he was dancing on his toes. "Try again."

 _Please, God._ Jack danced along the edge of a knife. "Girly man? Usually I'm dead after the first two."

"This is your last chance, Jack."

"This captivity thing is not doing wonders for my creativity."

The Master spun and stabbed him.

 

**Day 304**

The Master liked to use his fists. Of course, he only did it when Jack was incapable of fighting back. When there was no chance of his domination fantasies being overturned. To this end, his prisoner was often chained immobile while the living crap was beaten out of him.

But apparently that could only satisfy for so long.

Jack was released from his chains so rarely these days that he couldn't really stand well without their support anyway. The three days of starvation were overkill.

"Fight me, Jack." The Master bit his own lip coyly.

Jack was on his hands and knees on the ground, head spinning from the sudden change in altitude. He laughed. He couldn't help it.

The Master's expression coalesced into a snarl. "Do you think this is funny? I'm giving you a fighting chance!"

Jack briefly considered trying to stand, then decided it wasn't yet worth it. He laughed again, and shook his head wryly, staring the Master in the eyes. "I never had a fighting chance."

“Yet here you are."

Jack waited, but the Time Lord was uncharacteristically silent. _What the hell?_ "Here I am," he agreed.

The Master crouched down to his level and whispered. "And you're going to fight me. You may not have a fighting chance, as you say, but we both know you're going to try anyway."

"Fair enough." Jack lobbed a clumsy punch that just clipped the Master's jaw as he sprang away. Jack was slower, choosing this moment for the inevitable scramble to his feet. The Time Lord waited patiently then, just as Jack attained verticality, double him over with a jab to the stomach. An elbow to the back. Another punch to the kidney. Soon Jack's only real accomplishment was remaining standing, though he did, for a length of time that surprised even the Master. He kept throwing punches, too, even when the blood blinded him and his left wrist twisted breaking a fall. Even when he was no longer standing.

* * *

Jack understood why he woke up alone. He had given a good fight; the Master was temporarily satiated. He had earned this reprieve.

 

**Day 309**

The walls were paper thin and he was clear.

Jack knew what Gwen sounded like.

He could identify any member of his team by no more than a fragment of a breath and so he knew that there was exactly one of them on the other side of that wall and it was Gwen.

He knew where he was and why he was there. He knew that he was being watched. That was the point of this whole game in which there was only one player. A psychopath against himself; the rising weight of impossibility against the strength obtained from another’s pain.

Jack had only ever been a pawn for the Lords of Time.

That wasn’t going to stop him from tilting the game.

He stared resolutely inward and ignored the stimuli designed to drive him insane. Gwen was brave and gorgeous and worth holding out for. She knew what she was doing. And so did he.

He closed his eyes and thought comfort to her, thought he knew she could not respond. _Gwen_ , he thought. _Gwen_. Jack closed inside and was strong.

Somehow, somewhere, something inside a dark man broke.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Day 317**

"Captain," acknowledged the Time Lord.

"Saxon."

"Master," he corrected.

"Freak."

Jack glared lazily at the Master's slowly reddening face.

"Who's the one who has spent the last year chained up and screaming for his mother?" the Master whispered.

"Actually," Jack put in mildly, "I don't recall mentioning her once."

"I can make you," the Master growled as he reached behind him for some new implement of domination.

"You can," Jack observed, "but that would preclude all this civil conversation you seem hell-bent on having. Are you this colloquial with all of your prisoners?"

The Master stepped very close and Jack forced himself to not flinch away, aware it would only incite the man. "They're not quite so interesting," he breathed.

"Or maybe," Jack breathed back, "you stay away because around them you realize how worthless you are."

" _No_." The Master struggled to strike Jack at such close proximity, and ended up having to stumble back a step before he could affect an awkward swing. "I am _nothing_ like him."

"Of course not. He's brave and selfless and a hero." Jack grinned through a split lip. "You are nothing."

"Then what does that make you?"

"A coward. Weak. Helpless. Willing to do almost anything to be seen. I'm you."

"We are nothing alike."

"What would you do if our roles were reversed? What would I?"

The Master seemed to struggle and fail for words. So he retreated to his old mantra, forming a fist to brutalize his prisoner into dumbness. But Jack looked knowingly at the upraised hand and winked; the Master examined it as if he were rediscovering an old enemy and placed it at his side.

"You ran from the Dalek emperor," whispered Jack, fully aware of what would happen next and resolved not to pull his punches. "You hid for centuries. You were too terrified to face the Doctor--who would never lay a finger on you--without an army at your back--"

The Master ran.

 

**Day 322**

Jack lay sprawled on the floor, burned. Movement stretched and crackled the expanses of ruined skin, so he didn't.

The Doctor crouched in the corner, eyes blurred.

"He says you killed his family," Jack breathed.

"I did."

To hear him accept it so blankly, it drove Jack deeper into the floor. "How?" was all he could manage.

"I started the Time War. I desolated worlds. I obliterated my own species, and a hundred others."

"You don't kill."

The old man laughed, throaty and creaking. "I don't point guns and pull the trigger. That's too immediate. No, I'm just clever. I incite quarrels, spark wars, trick races into their own demise and fly away in the starlight."

"I knew that, you know. A hundred years in Torchwood, you figure out how it got started. And I've learned more than I ever wanted to. Did you know there's an entire race of aliens who use 'doctor' to mean 'great warrior'? Pretty impressive, the spread you have."

"You must abhor me." It was stated calmly, not accusing, even then.

"How do you live with yourself?" Jack could use with some advice on that point right now.

"Oh, Jack." The Doctor's eyes burned. "I run."

Jack lifted a sardonic eyebrow. "Yeah? I would never have guessed."

"I won't claim to always do the right thing, but perhaps... Perhaps it was ultimately good--for you--that I left. Even if you can't believe you're a good man, you have to admit you've saved a lot of people."

"No." Jack pushed himself to his elbows, hissing at the pain. "Do not presume to justify yourself. You do not have that right anymore." His biceps failed him a he slid back down. "You don't have the right..."

"Yeah. I know. I shouldn't-- you're so _brave_ \--" he gestured to the current physical evidence.

"Don't." Suddenly Jack needed him gone. He relied too much on this man, even now. Every particle of him strained forward, attuned to every signal of the Doctor's estimation of him. _You're an impossible thing, Jack_. He couldn't stop hearing those words. "Who are you to me anyway?" he laughed. "You can't have died more than a dozen times. Perfectly amateur. I grant you've probably lost more people, but I'd bet most of them under less painful circumstances. For all of your running a world-demolishing, I doubt you've sat down with a razor blade and an innocent man and spent hours reconstructing a petty code sequence--"

"You don't have to--"

"I _do_ have to! You have no right to command me to be silent, or to speak, or to grovel in front of you. No one has that right."

"You're right, Jack." The Doctor spoke softly.

"Yeah, I am. I spent two hundred years trying to find you, thinking that you knew something about what I am or why I'm here or what the hell I should do, thinking that you would _fix_ me. Then, when I finally find you, you tell me I'm impossible. I'm a freak. I don't belong anywhere. And you know what? I already figured that out for myself."

"I am so sorry." The tears could be heard in his voice.

"I know. I'm grateful for how you changed me, Doctor, the man you made me, but I'm not him any more. I wasted too much of my life on you. So you know what? Screw you. And... I forgive you."

"Thank you, Jack."

"You're welcome, Doctor."

 

**Day 324**

Where there was once a blazing light there was now only a tiny spark. It was enough.

 

**Day 329**

His hand was immobilized, strapped palm-up to a little metal table he could probably pick up and throw if he felt like it. It was just for show, like everything else in his life. He allowed the illusion to stand. He wondered why.

The Master scuttled around below him, with little pieces of metal imbued with meaning throughout the course of their little games. There was the laser screwdriver, a source of domination and power, a horrid connection to the sonic screwdriver, a parallel to the pain he suffered at the hands of this timelord and at the hands of the other. There was a metal poker. That burned. He hated it, so the man used it. These were both powerful weapons against Jack, but he was the source of their power.

He stopped.

"Say my name, Jack."

"We've already done this."

"Well, we're doing it again."

"I don't feel like it."

_Sizzle._

"That hurt."

 _Sizzle_.

"Can we get this over with? I'm bored."

The Master snapped up, neck ramrod straight and hands--Jack couldn't help but notice--clawed into the fists he himself so often adopted. He forced something down, ascended too a cool glare, and laughed.

"Funny thing, Jack. Did you know that that last one--Ianto--he never knew what was going on. He kept asking me where he was and where you were. All he knew was that you left him."

"Yeah, I know."

"He died abandoned and alone."

"Because of me. Believe me, I know. How did you?" The Master drew back slightly in confusion and the tail end of the power trailed along Jack's wrist, across his palm, coming to rest on the tip of his middle finger. He didn't allow himself to look at it. "You talked to him, didn't you? You asked him questions. You know, I bet you answered some of his own. How else would he _know_ that I abandoned him?"

The Master continued to stare at him questioningly, but he did not deny it.

"Ianto would always assume the best of me. It would have taken a long time to convince him." Jack broke out laughing suddenly, half at his own personal humour and half as a cry of pain. The poker, forgotten, nevertheless bit deeper. The laser screwdriver kept it red-hot.

"What?" hissed the Master, closer. "What? What do you know?"

"You!" Jack gasped through his tears. "You. That you're desperate for power because you know you're losing yourself. That you're alone and scared. That you _need_ me, like you need the Doctor. I bet Ianto knew it too, because you needed him too. You need someone to tell. Oh, trust me--" he barreled through the other man's protestations "--I know. You can't live that long alone. If you can't have friends, then you need enemies, but there has to be someone there who understands who you are. Otherwise you can't really exist. So, are you happy now? I'm here."

 

**Day 332**

This time the Doctor got to sit with him as he died.

"You never really miss what you have until it's gone. Do you, Jack?"

It was a harsh thing to say, Jack thought, but then again there was blood everywhere, drenching the pair of them, rusting their clothes and hands together, and even though all of it was Jack's, the Doctor did not pull away. That was something. Something beyond dominance.

"You know me," he agreed. _Or you think you do. At least, you think you can trust me_. It was a pity that all of the opportunities for trust in their relationship were one-way. It was a supportive gesture, though. The Doctor was allowing each little bit of life that left Jack to seep into his hair, his clothes, his eyes. He was carrying it for Jack, when Jack couldn't carry it for himself any more.

The question was: Would he carry Jack, when Jack couldn't carry himself any more?

With each pulse of blood that left him, though, he was reminded that he wasn't there yet. He still had life. He still had blood. And soon most of it would be gone but then it would come back. He would come back. He still had that. And that was what he saw in the blood that now choked him. For the first time in a long time he felt it wasn't choking a silent breath, but a story, something he needed or wanted to express, not just prolong.

The Master was trying to drain his life, but all he succeeded in was reminding him that he had it.

 

**Day 336**

There were new guards, previously stationed planet-side, Tish informed. The guards brought word of a menace, a girl blown to demonic proportions, striding the Earth. The rest was self-evident: the Master didn't feel like the previous contingent of guards was enough. He was scared.

 

**Day 342**

Jack knew exactly what this was.

The Master stormed in and Jack leaned back, resting, subtle. He couldn't hide anything anymore. He didn't know how. If there was a plan the Master could have seen it so of course there wasn't.

Just trepidation and exhaustion and a bit of calculation that could be dangerous in larger quantities but currently only functioned as entertainment. Jack was back. The Master grinned, and set a latent part of his mind to designing a game.

Jack was still back, relaxed, noticing a blood spatter diagonally across the floor that looked just like Myfanwy.

The Master slumped to the ground, just on his side of the line. Jack's line. He slumped in a fit, eyes wide with panic, breath harsh and metallic through straining fingers. It rolled in and rolled out with a manic laugh, the momentum bringing the Time Lord back to his tippy toes with a gasp not unlike that of Jack resurrecting. "Doesn't it _smell_ wonderful?" he whispered.

It smelled terrible. Like sweat and iron and burned hair. But Jack understood exactly.

The Master was still on his own side of the line.

At one end of the line was the Myfanwy blood splatter. At the other was a loose rivet, where a panel of the floor had pulled up. It must have been recent, because he hadn't noticed it before. The thing was too thick to function as a knife, but perhaps the corner could be sharpened... He didn't have any tools, but he would do what he had to. Yet still the placement of the thing would be trouble. It could only be of use to him if he was free, and that was rare.

The thing was riveted down at three corners. There was no way he could get it up and use it as any kind of weapon. The thought hadn't even occurred to him. He was just trying to figure out if he could use it for a quick death in times of need--

The Master, perhaps irritated that he was being ignored, inched forward slightly, over the line, and suddenly he was within Jack's reach. He kicked his legs up, ignoring as something tore in his back, locking his ankles around the smaller man and pulling him close. He knew that he couldn't permanently kill him, but at least he could hurt him, and that was enough for now. He could exchange pain for pain and perhaps recover something that he had lost. He knew firsthand the damage that teeth could do to bare skin.

A hollow buzz sounded distantly above him and he lost control of his muscles. The last thing he noticed before he died was the tang of victorious blood between his teeth.

 

**Day 344**

_I am not the ghost you want of me_.

 

**Day 351**

"Jack. Dinner." The Master disappeared back into the corridor, leaving a neatly folded suit in his wake. Jack laughed. Maybe the outfit was a sign that it really was going to be a dinner.

"Oops, sorry!" The Time Lord poked his head in again, pointing his laser screwdriver at the manacles, which snapped open. _Fancy._

Jack got dressed and was escorted to a sumptuous dining room. Four places were set art a table that could've sat twenty. _Four_... The Master paraded in, Lucy on his arm, and Jack's heart flew.

"Are we having a visitor today?" he grinned, hoping to God that the answer was yes and that this was just an innocuous dinner.

"I was in a good mood, and I decided that if the Jones were making a feast, I might as well invite the two people who could most use one."

"The room service really is terrible," Ianto remarked dryly from the doorway, and Jack's face felt like it would split from grinning. The Welshman appeared whole, if dangerously thin, and seemed to be enjoying his own dapper suit almost as much as Jack was.

"He just kept complaining about the laundry," remarked the Time Lord. "It was his idea to make this white tie." Lucy giggled softly.

"Ianto fucking Jones." Jack laughed. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Sorry for my absence, sir. I was held up." The Master really should have vaporized from the look Ianto shot him.

The Master gracefully slid Lucy's seat out for her and indicated with a nod that Jack may do the same for Ianto.

"Thank you, sir." Their fingers brushed, sending warmth and power right into Jack's chest. The moment lasted long after the touch ended.

The first course came in silver dishes, a blackberry and brie salad. Hungry as he was, all Jack really wanted to do was watch Ianto eat. Ianto, however, seemed to feel the same way and they struck up an unspoken compromise wherein each stuffed their faces whilst shooting loaded glances at each other.

Lucy was gasping at the view, for the walls were glass and they were floating over a desolate city to set the mood. Jack let his attention stray outward experimentally, and was rewarded with a wave of grief. His numbness was gone. Jack was back.

As they neared the dessert course, Jack's hope grew that this could, in face, be just a meal. Perhaps the impact was supposed to be in the scenery.

Ianto's mood seemed to be going in the opposite direction, however. By the time the creme brulee was brought out, he was barely picking at his food. Jack longed to reach across the table and interlace fingers, at least, but that was just too likely to provoke the Master into something violently dramatic.

They finished. The final plates were cleared away. The Master smiled. "What a delicious last meal."

"Fuck," groaned Jack, preparing to jump to his feet if it was Ianto the Master was planning to kill that night.

"Don't be an idiot, Jack," Ianto warned.

"That's right, don't be an idiot," the Master crooned. "I'll let you choose whose death it is--"

"Fine. Fine. What do you want?" _Please don't let it be anything bloody. I don't want Ianto to sit through anything bloody_.

"Lucy?" The waif produced a knife from somewhere in her skintight dress and placed it on the table as if it had stung her. "You may go." She nearly fled.

Ianto was growing paler by the moment and Jack occupied himself with glaring. Toclafane came to life at all corners of the room, hovering menacingly.

The Time Lord handed Jack the knife, hilt first. "I would like you to pin your hand to the table," he instructed pleasantly.

"It's mahogany."

"Even so."

"You don't have to do this," whispered Ianto, who was looking positively green.

Jack's answer, _yes I do_ , wouldn't make sense to anyone in the room except him, so he kept quiet as he positioned his hand on the table.

"Palm up, all the way through."

Jack nodded, once, then drove the blade downward before he could think about it. He bit back a scream. Still he tested it and, dragging his impaled left hand along like a limp fish, determined that he didn't make it all the way through. He hammered it with his right fist until it bit wood and looked up, triumphant, to find Ianto spewing out the splendid meal.

Idiotically, he flushed--was he really that disgusting?--then saw glee on the Time Lord's face and suspected foul play.

"He would have lost it anyway." The Master shrugged. "He's not used to food that rich."

"You bastard," Jack hissed, and now he saw marks on Ianto he hadn't wanted to before. Signs of more than malnutrition.

Ianto heaved violently and the Master was leaning into Jack's space, grinning and winking, and rage and pain and determination boiled up inside of him. He ripped the knife out of his own hand, fingers slick with blood, and shoved it as deep into the Time Lord's stomach as he could. There was a moment of honest surprise oh his face, a snarl of pain, and a breath in which Jack was the one who dealt in cruel surprises.

Then the Toclafane erupted into enraged whirs and Jack threw himself at Ianto, knocking him out of his chair and doing his best to cover the Welshman's body with his own. The Master pulled the blade out of himself and dropped it to the ground with stuttering fingers.

"No! Stop!" The Time Lord's voice was pitched at a wail to be heard. "Don't kill Jones yet! I need him!"

Ianto trembled violently beneath him and Jack was fucking done. He picked up the knife and carefully, tenderly, slit his lover's throat.

Then Jack's uncertainty was back and he was too horrified to figure what to do next. So he curled in tighter, now cradling a dead body, as the Toclafane descended upon him.

 

**Day 354**

"You donated to charity," Jack accused as soon as the Master walked in. "You had a car wash for cancer. You actually washed cars."

"And the people _loved_ it! Politics on this planet. You are all so fickle."

"You can't deny it. Secretly you just really want to help us become a better race. Remember that lifetime you spent as a scientist, trying to save the remnants of humanity?"

"Vaguely. In my nightmares. Sometimes I'm still disgusted with myself."

"You helped us. You were one of us." Jack was really just teasing to exercise the muscle, but that one seemed to hit home.

"I was not one of you! I have never been one of your puny, weak, miserable, species. Never. I would never stoop so low."

"No, I guess..." Jack considered. "You weren't really _one_ of us. You were just hiding behind us. So we would protect you from the big scary monsters."

" _Shut up!_ " The Master bellowed, tone swinging wildly. Then he dropped his voice, stepped into the space Jack considered personal, and smiled serenely. "That's all past. I'm the big scary monster now."

He proved the point with a knife.

 

**Day 357**

_I am more than memory. I'm alive._

 

**Day 364**

Mouth open, saliva dangling in sweaty strands to the dirty floor an inch below, he panted. With another forceful kick the Master flipped him over, onto his bound hands. The positioning of his arms wasn't tenable, so he weakly arched his back to readjust them even as his compressed lungs gasped in air. He began to scramble backward on his shoulders and feet, but before he could find a wall to prop himself up on, the Master grabbed him around the collar and hauled. He scrambled to get his legs under him to avoid being choked, but before he got all the way up he was struck across the jaw and thrown to the ground, rolling with the pain, across the room, always in search of that wall.

"--much longer, I think." The Master grabbed the fleeing man with both hands around the neck and again dragged him to his feet. Jack choked and sputtered, glaring at his knees, sternly ordering them to hold. But rebellion coursed through every inch of him, and he went dead weight. The Master threw him down again in disgust. The back of his head cracked against the concrete, and he accidentally bit down on his lip. Salt and iron reverberated through his head as he considered the perils of unconsciousness.

"--have anything," finished the Doctor.

They were graced with the captured Time Lord's presence today.

"I could have anything," parodied the Master, flaunting his steps towards the reluctantly conscious prisoner. "All of time and space. All that ever was or had ever been." He tilted his head like a golden retriever puzzled and even surprised by the bloody man lying on the floor in front of it. "Mine to see and to hold. But never to _have_." He swiftly kicked the freak twice in the stomach, then spun around, eyes ablaze. "This is possession! This is power-- _but you knew that_." He was across the room, kneeling, at eye level with the aged Doctor, lower lip soft and pleading.

Jack flipped weakly over onto his side and spit out blood. His vision wavered, but he could still see the crouched figures across the room. In his weakened state, he found them difficult to differentiate. With concentration he could understand their speech, when they spoke loud enough.

The Master was up and again spinning, flying across the room in his rage. Jack noted obliquely that the man was always orbiting, whether it was a prisoner or his own twisted center of gravity that drew him. "Because this is _what you do_! You _Doctor_! You savior of worlds, of species, where were you-- when-- where were--" he broke into incoherence, spittle raining the wrath of god.

Jack found a wall.

"They _died_ , you fucking coward! The mightiest race in the universe, my home, you had the power to stop the war and you watched it burn. No, worse than that, you're worse than that-- you're-- you don't deserve this. You deserve nothing. The most miserable existence I can create, that's what you get, because you became a mass murderer, then you _ran away_ , and now you have the gall to call yourself a savior, to accept the love and praise of the ignorant and frightened--"

Jack launched himself at the Master, having finally attained verticality. He caught the man in a chokehold and the both fell to the ground as the Master struggled for his laser screwdriver. Meanwhile, Jack did his damnedest to squeeze the life out of him.

Then Jack was cut deeply across the chest and he fell away. He was going to die now. But he had shown the Doctor what he needed to show him: that, when the time came, Jack Harkness was going to do what he needed to do.

 

 

* * *

**  
**

**Epilogue**

_November 2010, midnight, Cardiff_

 

 

 

 

> “Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything.” ( _William Faulkner_ )

  

From his perspective it looked like Gwen was fading away. He braced himself against the tears in her eyes as he slipped into the emptiness that was teleportation. It was like a willing death: tearing away in the agony of loss, propelling himself into a temporary nothing. It was like a lesson in drowning.

But the thing about death, for Jack Harkness, was that he always woke up. No matter how many lifetimes it took, he always woke up. Unimaginable as it was now, that’s how he knew:

Someday he would be back.

 

* * *

 

**Thank you for reading my story.**


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